Wild Child
by River in Flames
Summary: Lost and alone in an ancient forest of endless savagery 10 year old Harry Potter's only hope for sanity and survival are a terrifying power he does not understand and haunting visions of a red haired girl he has never met. AU
1. The Birthday Whipping

**Wild Child**

**Chapter One**

_The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted._

_Stephen King_

_The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon_

_. . ._

When a teacher asks a child the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" it is almost invariably with the sort of bemused benevolence that adults exude when looking forward to a particularly precocious answer. Luckily for the adults children tend to be singularly gifted at turning even the most mundane sounding of aspirations into full blown delusions of grandeur. Firemen, police officers, truck drivers, astronauts, the occasional paleontologist, and even the somewhat dubious vocation of lawyer all become symbols of the power of justice in the shining eyes of a child. Every now and then the teacher might find themselves truly surprised by a young megalomaniac who announces his decision to rule the world. At this the teacher will simply laugh and nod, pledging their undying support of the future world ruler. And while in that particular instance they may only be playing along out of amusement, it cannot be disputed that many impossible dreams have been made possible when a devoted teacher lent their unwavering support to a determined student.

It is therefore most unfortunate that there was no kind hearted teacher standing in the narrow doorway that opened into the dark cupboard beneath the stairs inside Number Four Privet Drive on July 31, 1990 at about 10:30 PM. Had our imaginary kind hearted teacher opened that door and spoken but a single kind word to the boy inside they would have been rewarded with a burst of joy that likely would eclipse any they had seen before, like a blind man opening his eyes and suddenly seeing for the first time, just in time to behold the first brilliant rays of sunlight bursting through the clouds after a heavy rain.

As it were there was no kind teacher, no kindness at all in fact for the boy who lay inside. Strictly speaking however, Harry Potter could have done without a kind word. At this point he would have responded rather fabulously to anything which was not directly intended to hurt him.

So it was that at about 10:30 PM on his tenth birthday, July 31, 1990, our imaginary teacher would have been reeling in shock at Harry's answer to his question. Because Harry knew exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up.

He wanted to be dead. As soon as possible, preferably.

The day had begun like any other on Number Four Privet Drive. The sun had risen, probably. After all, cupboards under staircases have no windows, and sunlight finds it difficult to reach such dark places. This one did have an old battered alarm clock though, which ensured that useless little boys were awake before anyone else so that they could have breakfast ready by the time the other (productive) members of the household were up and moving about. Harry did precisely that. The battered alarm clock rang only once before it was silenced (oversleeping was right out!), and in moments he was standing in the kitchen preparing an impressive breakfast which included, among other things, large stacks of crisp bacon, scrambled eggs, with a few "sunny side up" warming in a pan to the side (Dudley liked to poke the yolks and play with the mess it made), hash browns, and enough coffee to keep even the rather ponderous girth of Vernon Dursley wired for the better part of fourteen hours. He did this with the casual ease of one long used to such an endeavor.

It should be noted that such an extravagant breakfast was not the norm on Privet Drive, nor likely in any other household in Surrey County. However, eating such finely prepared meals at every sitting made the Dursleys feel quite sophisticated, so Harry continued to prepare five star meals for his somewhere below half star relatives three times a day, with the occasional tea and crumpets when a guest came around to visit.

It was after breakfast that Harry's "normal" day on Number Four Privet Drive began to change. His fat cousin Dudley Dursley had been too preoccupied that morning, first with shoveling great forkfuls of ketchup laden hash browns down his throat, and then with splattering egg yolk about his plate, to remember the significance of the day. Harry had looked down at his own serving of hash brown (half a serving, actually) and almost not eaten it. Somehow Dudley managed to make the normally appetizing strips of fried potato look like masses of bloody worms as he crammed them down his gullet. Food was a scarce commodity for Harry Potter however, never mind that he cooked enough of it every day to feed his entire Year 5 classroom at least twice, so he quickly ate them anyway and then slipped from the dining room as unobtrusively as possible.

Once he was free of the prying eyes of his relatives he was met with a choice. His uncle would soon be seeking him out with a list of chores (all the chores, actually) for the day and, provided Harry kept his head down and made himself as invisible as possible, the two elder Dursleys would likely be content to leave him be. Dudley however was a different matter altogether. Harry had no doubt that once his cousin was finished gorging himself at the table he would quickly begin looking for some way to entertain himself. Unfortunately, Dudley's entertainment of late had consisted more and more of tormenting Harry. Dudley had always been a bully but until recently had been mostly harmless. Mostly. Small bruises healed without too much fuss and Harry was generally much too quick for his whale of a cousin to inflict any more than that. Dudley had become more persistent though, and the size and weight difference between the two of them was becoming more dangerous each day. Dudley's meaty fists no longer left such small bruises, and he didn't need to land nearly as many punches before Harry's senses began to spin bafflingly, making it very hard to run away. These days Harry found it far easier to begin running before the attack began, rather than after. Add to that the fact that last week Dudley had quite gleefully informed Harry of a tradition called "Birthday Whippings" and Harry was very worried about how his cousin would decide to fill the hours on this particular day.

His choices then, as he saw them, were as follows: He could stay at home and do his uncle's chores, taking care to stay within sight of his aunt or uncle at all times. Dudley would still hit him, but at least he would pull his punches somewhat if his parents were watching. As long as he was just being "playful" Dudley would hear no reprimand from them and any protest Harry might make would be silenced by a lecture on how he could "get along with other boys his age if he weren't so unnatural." On the other hand, he could skive off chores and spend most of the day hiding in the park. This would spare him Dudley's bullying but would earn him Vernon Dursley's ire. Either way he was going to catch a beating. His decision would simply decide which Dursley male he got it from.

As he stood in the front hallway considering his options he heard the heavy scrape of a chair from the dining room and his aunt's voice, "Are you sure you don't want any more sweetums?" A negative grunt from Dudley confirmed that he was done eating and Harry realized that he did not want to be caught standing about so early in the morning. He was standing next to the doorway to the cupboard beneath the staircase, but after glancing at it for a moment turned and instead dashed for the living room door, further across the hall. He had just cleared the doorframe when Dudley stepped out of the dining room and into the hallway. Harry hoped that he would go directly upstairs to his room, or out the front door rather than entering the living room. From the sound of his footsteps though, Dudley had decided not to do any of the three. Perhaps he had stopped to tie his shoe?

Harry's eyes widened in surprise when he heard the telltale creak of the door to the cupboard beneath the staircase being opened. What was Dudley up to? Harry edged closer to the living room door, trying to better hear what was happening. A moment later he heard a muffled thump, as though something very heavy had sat down on his blankets, and then the disgusting staccato bleats of explosive flatulence mingled with Dudley's snorting laughter. Harry wanted to scream in indignation! That fat pig was defiling his bed!

He bit back his reaction though. If Dudley was worked up enough to fart on Harry's bed sheets when Harry wasn't even around to see it then he must be in a very aggressive mood. Apparently once the food could no longer hold his attention Dudley had immediately remembered that it was Harry's birthday. Harry quickly slipped out the living room door and made for the front door. A shout behind him caused him to abandon all pretense at stealth and he reached the door in two running steps, flung it open, and launched himself down the front steps and across the lawn. He didn't bother attempting to close the door and he could hear his cousin pounding down the hall after him.

Definitely the park.

"The Park" had no name as far as Harry knew. He thought it could be named something like "Little Whinging Community Park" or even "Magnolia Avenue Park," but he had never seen a sign which could confirm his guesswork. There was an old set of posts at the main entrance, but if they had held the sign which had proclaimed the park's identification they held it no longer. Harry figured hooligans had probably gotten it.

Regardless of the park's unknown name, it had become to him "Harry's Hideaway." He came here often when he wanted to avoid his aunt and uncle, and it was sufficiently large enough that he had little trouble hiding from Dudley and his gang as well. It really wasn't a very good park as parks go, although Harry had never seen another park in person, only in picture books. For all that the members of the surrounding neighborhoods prided themselves on neatness and sophistication the park which lay just beyond their backyards was a little old, a little rundown, and a little seedy. The tires and swing sets were decorated in varying degrees of old and not-so-old graffiti and the sandboxes were mostly full of cat poop. Still, Harry considered it a much friendlier place than Number Four Privet Drive and stole away to it as much as he possibly could.

He passed the day slowly, the hours plodding by like the proverbial tortoise; steady, but certainly not exciting in the least. He swung on the swings, climbed on the old tires half embedded in the ground, and as the day steadily grew hotter lay in the dry grass beneath one of the scraggly trees watching the clouds roll by and trying to see what kind of shapes he could make out. The usual parade of ducks, cats, and the occasional Old Saint Nick made their appearances. Anytime a cloud formed which was large, mostly round, and featureless Harry dubbed it a "Dudley," and for a few minutes he found himself completely breathless with laughter when a "Dudley" emerged from a cloud which bore a suspicious resemblance to a horse's hindquarters. Sometime well after midday the wind picked up and the clouds stretched themselves into long thin streamers from which interesting shapes could no longer be discerned, and Harry abandoned the shade of the tree and amused himself with a game of "Kick the Can" for some indeterminable amount of time.

Deep violet shadows were winding about him when voices broke Harry out of his can-kicking trance. Looking up for the source of the noise he was surprised at how late it had become, but that thought fled from his mind once he spotted the group of boys walking slowly along the road. Dudley and his gang were still distant from him, on the other side of the park, two or three hundred meters at least, but somehow their voices carried well across the distance and Harry was thankful for it. They hadn't seemed to have seen him so he dashed quickly towards the nearest cover he could see, a low row of bushes that lined the park's unkempt and overgrown walking path. He crouched there and watched them as they passed and did not leave his hiding place until they were several minutes out of sight.

Given that dusk was approaching Harry figured that Dudley would soon be making his way home, and he decided to do the same. An idea struck him as he walked and he soon began to run. If he could get home while some light remained he could find a chore to complete outside, then when his uncle questioned him on his whereabouts, Harry would simply tell him he had spent the entire day outside. Provided he was able to complete enough work to make it believable Harry felt as though he might be able to end his birthday not only avoiding any beatings, but also one-upping his snarky relatives with a bit of creative truth-telling. It was with a smile that he hurdled the low wall surrounding Number Four Privet Drive and made directly for his aunt's flower garden. He worked in it more than she did, and could weed it and have it looking picture perfect in a surprisingly short amount of time. Not only would this cement his cover story, it would also put him about as far onto his aunt's good side as was possible, which was to say not very far at all, but anything that gave him an edge was worth doing.

Just as the light was becoming too dim to see in Harry clipped the last errant branch from the rose bushes and, teasing the thorny bushes just a bit, arranged the flowers perfectly so that they appeared to be growing in a pleasantly uniform pattern across an unbroken background of green leaves. Stepping back Harry squinted at his work in the gloom and gave a self-satisfied nod. He'd outdone himself in his opinion. No matter how much his aunt despised him her garden was a source of much pride for her, and given that this seemed to be his best work yet even she couldn't help but be pleased. As he put up the clippers and other tools Harry was so busy patting himself on the back that he almost didn't hear the piggish snort of excitement behind him. Not even bothering to turn around he lunged from the shed and sprinted toward the corner of the house. Something tugged at his shirt but found no purchase and he heard Dudley swear viciously as his failed grapple caused him to stumble. Harry allowed himself an internal sigh of relief even as he pushed his legs for more speed. Dudley would never catch up to him in a footrace, but that didn't mean he was going to take it easy. Once he made it into the house he would be mostly safe from any of Dudley's "birthday presents."

He was halfway down the length of the house when something whipped by him, grazing his shoulder painfully as it passed. Ahead of him in the grass a dull gray object bounced on the front lawn. The fat whale was throwing rocks at him! The decorative stones in the garden bed were smooth river rocks slightly larger than his hand and weighing about one pound. Taking a hit from one of those would leave more than just a bruise. Hearing his cousin grunt behind him Harry ducked and the rock that would have laid his head open instead pulled at his hair as it whistled over him.

Later he would wish he had let it hit him.

A sharp crunching sound drove a corkscrew of dread into his guts and he halted his run to gape in horrified astonishment at his uncle's company car, now right beside him where the dying momentum of his sprint had carried him. Dudley's side-armed throw made him rubbish in baseball, since anything he threw always pulled heavily to the left. The rock that had brushed Harry's head had, true to form, pulled to the left…and smacked squarely into the front windshield of Vernon Dursley's brand new company car. The car that he was so ridiculously proud of. He heard a muffled oath from within the house and whirled around to face the front door. His eyes barely caught his fat cousin disappearing around the back of the house and Harry knew he should run as well, but at that moment the door swung open and Vernon Dursley waddled out onto the front steps bellowing "What was that noise?"

In the dim twilight his eyes found Harry and he shook his finger at him. "Don't just stand there boy, tell me what that…" he began, but then his gaze swept over his car and registered the ruined windshield. His entire body became eerily still and his jaws worked furiously, though no sound came out. Harry knew that he should do something, say something, but his mind was frozen in panic. He couldn't come up with any way to convince his uncle that this wasn't his doing, not when he was standing right beside the car. Slowly his uncle turned to face him and even in the darkness Harry could see his face was turning a deep shade of purple. His chest and throat hitched violently as though he were trying to spew something vile out. Then he opened his mouth and spoke and Harry thought he really did see something come out with the words; something monstrous and unnamable, but it was obviously just his imagination.

"…Inside." His uncle gasped, straining the word as though he had difficulty speaking it. "Get inside now."

Still trapped in a whirlwind of panic Harry found his legs moving to obey his uncle without his consent. He could no more stop his feet from carrying him towards the door than he could wrap his mind around how terribly, terribly wrong the day had suddenly turned. He had worked everything out perfectly. How could it go so badly so quickly?

Once inside the house he saw his aunt standing in the kitchen doorway watching him with an expression that was perhaps a little wide eyed, but otherwise unreadable. He heard the click of the latch on the front door as it closed and opened his mouth to say something, anything. If he could get them talking he might yet be able to avoid a worst case scenario.

The sudden jerk of his aunt's gaze from his face to something behind him was the only warning he got. Lights exploded across Harry's field of vision, and when he regained his focus he found himself looking at his uncle. There was something weird about the sight and it took a moment to realize what it was. He was lying on the floor, which was funny, since he didn't remember lying down. His head was throbbing and ringing and it made it hard to think, but after a moment he realized his uncle was screaming at him and his fist was raised threateningly. Vernon Dursley reared his leg back as though to kick him and Harry's thoughts clarified instantly and he suddenly understood what was happening. With a lurch he surged to his feet, narrowly avoiding the blow. He tried to make a dash for the cupboard but his legs didn't seem to have any strength in them. The floor rushed up to meet him and his arms wouldn't move the way he wanted them to. He smashed nose first onto the polished hardwood surface and with a sickening crunch blood splattered a gruesome red crescent pattern onto the immaculate floor. His glasses rattled against his face and the masking tape bound break in the middle separated again but somehow they remained mostly in place. Petunia Dursley shrieked at the sight and disappeared into the kitchen, emerging a second later to throw a dish rag at him as though she expected it to magically clean up the mess. Or maybe she expected him to clean it up himself.

Harry didn't care what his aunt wanted. A second kick caught him directly beneath the breastbone and he curled into a tight ball, lungs pulling futilely for air. Undulating darkness crept across his vision. His uncle was still screaming and through ringing ears he could only pick out a few words of what was said. "Little criminal! … new car … company car! … ruined! Gonna make you pay, freak!" A third kick landed squarely on his hip bone and he heard something in his uncle's slipper clad foot snap loudly. Vernon Dursley howled and cursed, hopping up and down on his good foot like a grotesquely misshapen pogo stick. Muscles crying for oxygen, Harry used the distraction to pull himself toward the cupboard. He would be safe in the cupboard. His relatives hated the cupboard. Hated the darkness, hated the spiders, and hated the smell, the smell of an unwashed body confined too long in one space. If he could just make it to the cupboard before his uncle recovered he was sure he would be left alone.

He reached the door and pulled himself up, his bruised stomach protesting the motion, and clawed at the knob. His aunt uttered a tremulous cry and jumped back into the kitchen, slamming the door shut behind her. Harry had just managed to get the cupboard door open when he felt something grab hold of the back of his shirt and lift him off the ground. The dark cupboard yawned in front of him for a moment before his uncle literally threw him inside. He smashed his nose painfully again among his bed sheets and as he rolled further into the corner, away from his uncle's reach, he heard the man's voice snarling, doglike, "You're never coming out!" Then he slammed the door and Harry heard the deadbolt lock slide into place.

He lay in the dark for a long time, trying not to whimper. He had learned long ago that too much noise brought more punishment. He was exhausted, but he ached too badly to sleep. His head was throbbing and even the lightest of touches on his nose summoned lances of pain that brought fresh tears to his eyes. His stomach ached abominably. He tried desperately to keep his mind blank. Thinking only brought reminders of how clever he had thought himself earlier in the day. He was such a stupid kid. Finally, as fatigue numbed his injuries, Harry began to drift. He hated this. He hated his life, hated his relatives, and hated himself.

As sleep claimed him Harry muttered into the darkness, "I wish I was dead."

Inside the cupboard beneath the staircase in Number Four Privet Drive, something invisible surged powerfully. Outside, another invisible force stretched, strained, cracked, and became weaker. Far away, in a castle, in an office, on a desk, a strange little device began to beep and twirl. There was no one in the office to see its little dance.

The night grew very still.


	2. A Thief in the Night

**Wild Child**

**Chapter Two**

. . .

From a deeper crevice of stygian night which birthed itself suddenly betwixt earth and sky she galloped, terrible mount clack-clacking with unnatural gait as it beat the stifling mid-summer air with ghastly limbs high above the shingled roofs. Hunger spurred this night's ride, and nostalgia inspired its destination. Away from her forest sanctuary and beholding old haunts for the first time in hundreds of years her mouth began to water, ribbons of odious saliva running between cruel yellow fangs and down her gnarled chin. She was tired of bugs and worms and whatever was old or wounded. She was tired of fighting those wicked acromantulas for prey; curse them for invading her claim! No, she hungered for pink flesh again, young and tender and screaming. Her stomach practically roared at the smell of it below her in the strange looking houses. The houses had glass in the windows now, but no nasty charms to keep her arms out. The glass would break, she would reach in, into the bed, into the crib and…

It was as though a distant vein of darkness had been tapped and suddenly spewed forth gouts of suffering and loathing. Invisible it was, but she could feel it and she paused for a moment, bent like a vulture with eyes straining to the south. The smell of it came to her and she whooped in delight; it was the putrid stench of despair, and it was young, so young! Yanking her mount to the south she drummed her heels against its skeletal ribs and giggled at the weeping from within. Like a wildly fired arrow she soared across the night sky. Behind her the modern day county of Leicester lay forgotten, spared, and blissfully ignorant that it was either. Ahead over the horizon, at the terminus of her lunatic charge, lay the county of Surrey.

--

Harry scrambled amongst his ratty blankets as the floor tilted under him. He was sliding to the back of the cupboard beneath the staircase, but instead of the bare, yellowing plasterboard wall there was a yawning pit within which whistled some vaguely discordant and horrible melody that put his heart in his throat and made his entire body quake with dread. The blankets sucked at him like living things trying to drag him down and he clawed at the grimy floor for purchase. Just when he thought that the combination of demoniac fabrics and the steadily slanting floor would send him tumbling into that bottomless abyss his fingers brushed the door handle. Sobbing with relief Harry clung to it as he gave a desperate heave and the door fell open.

Though the space beyond the door was dark and unpromising Harry thought that anywhere had to be better than the terrifying cupboard, with its throat-like pit gaping hungrily behind him as the floor slowly and inexorably tipped him backwards until the very air seemed to grab at the back of his shirt. However even as he clambered to reach the opening something enormous slammed into the doorframe and rattled the walls, almost causing Harry to lose his tenuous grip on the door handle. Vernon Dursley's monstrous face filled the doorway from top to bottom, wriggling at the entrance like a hideously colossal worm. His obscenely obese jowls flowed around the edges of the door and into the cupboard, and spittle dribbled from his putrescent lips onto the floor, slicking it and forcing Harry to pedal his feet desperately against the sudden lack of traction. Those lips parted, revealing a noisome mouth, and this time Harry was certain there really was something in Vernon Dursley's throat. Briefly he got the impression of something ridged, sinuous, and slime covered slithering behind the scabrous tongue. In a voice that seemed to shake the world and set Harry's ears to ringing Vernon roared at him, "YOU'RE NEVER COMING OUT!!"

Weeping with terror and frustration Harry screamed back at him, "Let me out of here! Get out of my way!"

The repulsive visage only grinned unpleasantly at him.

"Oh no," it said cruelly. "I put you in. I put you in, and that means you're never coming out. Freaks don't deserve to be free."

The floor beneath him was no longer a floor; it was tilted completely vertical. The door in the wall was now a door in the ceiling and Harry dangled from the handle by his fingertips, suspended over the endless chasm that had once been an old and slightly smelly plasterboard wall. Harry screamed at his uncle to move, to let him out, but the grinning face only began to laugh. He screamed even louder, raising his voice until each word he shouted tore painfully at his throat as it emerged, but that only caused Vernon to laugh even harder, spraying flecks of reeking saliva all over. Finally Harry could yell no more, and at last he understood the truth. His uncle was right: he would not be getting out through the door. That left only the pit, and Harry was certain that if he fell into that never-ending shadow that he would die.

Defeated and despairing, Harry let go of the door handle.

Darkness rushed up to receive him and slipped around him, covered him, clutching and clinging to him as he plummeted downward. Above, the cupboard under the staircase disappeared in the distance until all that was left was a pair of luminous, bloodshot eyes watching his endless descent. The blackness pressed closer and closer to him until he felt that he would suffocate. Drawing breath became impossible.

With a strangled gasp Harry awoke from one nightmare and into another. Something heavy and foul smelling was sitting on his chest, making it difficult to breathe. Hard, dry things prodded at his face, then seized his head painfully and with a quiver of terror Harry realized that they were hands. Someone was in the cupboard with him! He thrashed about uselessly and tried to cry out, but he simply couldn't draw enough breath. He thought that it had to be Dudley, coming to give Harry the beating he had earlier been denied, but no sooner than the thought had entered his mind he saw something in the darkness that made him wish it _was_ Dudley. Two pale, yellow, lamp-like eyes opened inches from his face, glowing dim and wicked with some inner light. They were large and completely round, bulging out of sockets which their faint luminescence barely revealed. Veins crisscrossed on the sickly surface and there was no iris at all, just pupils in the form of large, dark holes.

The hands shook his head roughly and a horrible cackle burst from the dark space beneath the eyes. Terror clawed at him and his chest heaved up and down in an endless effort to scream, but all that came out of his mouth were pathetic, mewling gasps.

"Hee hee hee!" giggled the voice. "It struggles, it does! Ha ha! Annis likes them to struggle, yes she does!"

The thing began bouncing up and down on Harry's stomach and for a few moments a blackness settled over both his vision and his thoughts. When his sight began to return he realized he was moving, being drug along the floor by his ankle, but he was too winded to do more than take great gulps of air. The glow of the porch light through the glass on the front door revealed that the thing dragging him was the ugliest old woman he had ever seen. Tall, gangly, and completely ragged in appearance, she had blue tinged skin that made her look like a sodden corpse. Her oily black hair clung together in filthy, stringy clumps and strange looking herbs were tied into it haphazardly. Her nose was bent and pointed, and from behind her cracked lips flashed uneven and wicked looking teeth. She shuffled down the hallway towards the front door dragging Harry along behind her. The fingers which clutched his ankle ended in long barbs, more like talons than fingernails.

Finding his breath again Harry began to fight her, kicking at her hands with his free leg, but it only caused her to chuckle evilly. He opened his mouth to scream and found to his horror that he could not. Air moved in his throat, and he felt the vibrations of his voice box, but no sound at all emerged from his lips. At this the crone laughed outright.

"Struggle all you like, yes, but no screaming. Not yet," she said, turning to poke at his throat with a long, sharp finger. He batted at the hand, but it felt like slapping steel. His hands stung from the effort. "Plenty of time for screaming later," she added nastily.

Harry's eyes widened as her words penetrated the fog of fear over his senses. It had only been moments since he had awakened in the darkness of the cupboard beneath the staircase with a crushing weight on his chest, and now, seeing his tormentor in the dim light of the hallway and hearing her words, he began to consider why he was being carried away. _'She's going to drag me to a dark place and eat me!'_ he thought.

If his terror had caused him to panic before, now it was maddening. With all his might he bucked his body off the floor, twisting away as he did so. For a moment strength filled him like never before. His muscles felt taut and powerful, nothing at all like the muscles that belonged to short, skinny Harry Potter. He heard something rattling, but it was as though it was far away. The only thing on his mind at that moment was the power in his body. The crone was caught off guard and she staggered at the sudden movement. He slammed his hands down on the floor for leverage and the boards beneath them cracked and shifted under the force. He jerked again and gave his captured leg a vicious kick, and for a moment long enough to send a bolt of hope through him it seemed like he might free himself, but with her free hand the hag viciously raked his thigh. Pain seared his leg and wet warmth began spreading from the area she had attacked. With the pain all the strength that had filled him vanished, and, adjusting her grip, the hag continued shuffling toward the door. Now lying on his stomach Harry flailed his arms searching for something to hold on to, but the front hallway had no such thing. His fingers slid across the hardwood floor without the slightest resistance, and the walls provided even less. As he thumped across the threshold he caught hold of the doorframe and attempted to pull himself back inside the house, but for such a skinny looking creature the old woman was fearfully strong. Without breaking stride she gave him a firm tug and two of his fingernails tore off as he was jerked out of the door. His chin thumped painfully on the front steps and spots danced in front of his eyes.

The hag hauled him across the damp lawn and then paused for a moment. Something stamped at the ground and Harry twisted around to see what had made the noise. Standing next to the low wall was the most horrible thing he had ever seen. There was no name for it. A large, round, skeletal ribcage was supported by six skeleton legs. The legs were not really legs however; they appeared to be human arms, the bony hands splayed out in the grass. A long fish tail marked the hindquarters, and at the front, a fish skull was connected to the ribcage by a long, knobby spine. From within the eyeless sockets a disturbing pale light shone and as the thing moved some liquid seemed to slosh around inside. A misshapen saddle was draped over its back. The stirrups looked like stretched, leathery faces.

He was so shocked by the appearance of the beast that he did not even react when the hag threw him over the saddle and jumped up behind him. The creature leaped into the air and suddenly Number Four Privet Drive was shrinking beneath him as they rose higher and higher into the air. Movement from within the ribcage drew his attention and he saw that it was filled with a squirming, distorted mass. A face pushed itself out of the mass suddenly, just a few centimeters from his own. It was the face of a young boy, roughly Harry's age, had he still been alive. His milky eyes bored into Harry's for what seemed like eternity. "Help me," it pleaded, and other faces appeared beside it, all children, all dead. "Help us, please."

High in the sky, whatever spell the witch had cast on him was broken, and Harry found that he could scream again.

--

A loud sneeze broke the silence in the tiny office, rapidly followed by two more. There was a bit of ineffectual snuffling and the rustling of a handkerchief being drawn from a pocket, then there was a noisy honk and the office fell silent again save for the scratching of a quill on parchment. A stack of dusty papers nearly a meter high teetered precariously on the edge of one of the office's two desks, having been unbalanced by the sneezing. It swayed threateningly for almost five minutes, unnoticed, before it crashed onto the floor.

With a shout of surprise a tall, thin wizard jumped up from the desk and stared at the mess.

"Oh, of all the bloody…" he began, then froze, looking around. When it seemed that no one had been close enough to hear him, Arthur Weasley sighed and ran a hand through his thinning red hair. He did not like people to hear him cursing. He was a role model after all, and he most certainly did not condone bad language. Removing his wand from his coat pocket he gave it a quick wave and the papers lifted off the floor and arranged themselves somewhat neatly back on top of his desk. It was a deceptive neatness however, since Arthur knew that the papers were now hopelessly out of order and would require that he hand sort them later. His wife may have been able to tweak the magic _just so_ to make it sort the papers as well, but he lacked her organizational skills, so a haphazard clean up job would have to do for the time being.

As he sat back down at his desk a small paper airplane drifted through the door and began flying circles around his head. Plucking it out of the air he carefully unfolded it to reveal a report addressed to the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office. He frowned slightly as he read and tapped his quill thoughtfully against his chin, unaware that he was dripping ink onto his coat sleeve.

"So many charmed objects in one location is going to require a tricky bit of memory magic," he murmured to himself. "Going to have to forward this to the Auror department."

He sat at his desk and rummaged in the drawers for a few minutes, shifting stacks of paper about and muttering under his breath. Finally, with an "Aha!" of triumph, he pulled out a lengthy and official looking form and began filling it out. Once he was done he folded it carefully into a paper airplane along with the original memo and sent it speeding out the door. A few minutes later the quill once again filled the office with the scratching sound of painstaking progress and Arthur Weasley put the unusually large group of enchanted Muggle objects out of his mind. Just someone playing pranks on a Muggle family who had aroused their ire, nothing more.

--

William F. King shivered as he entered his office on the second level of the Ministry of Magic. With a grunt he dumped a load of paperwork on his desk and, grumbling curses at the Maintenance Department, flicked his wand from its forearm holster and into his hand. The cooling charms were malfunctioning again and his office felt like a meat locker. Waving his wand around, he tapped the four walls and, with a little hop that set his knees to creaking and jiggled the paunch he had been struggling vainly against for the last 30 years, he jabbed the ceiling sharply while murmuring the incantations that would put his office back at an inhabitable temperature.

Finally setting the errant charms right, King set about gathering up the day's paperwork and filing it carefully in his many filing cabinets. A veteran Auror of 39 years, these cabinets had been expanded hundreds of times and each now contained documentation on thousands of cases dating back to the late 1950s. After the retirement of men such as Alastor Moody, King was now one of the oldest members of the Auror Department, and he himself was nearing retirement age. Despite his seniority, he had never cared to rise far above the rank of Inspector. He much preferred field work to desk duty, and it was only in recent years, as age stiffened joints that had once been nimble and aggravated injuries from the Dark Lord's uprising that had been thought long healed, that he found himself more often seated in his office with a quill in his hand than out in the world with a wand.

Heaving a sigh as he tucked away the last report, King grabbed his briefcase and headed for the door. It was time to go home. He had just stepped into the hallway when a voice called his name. Turning, he saw Kingsley Shacklebolt hurrying toward him. Tall, dark, and always impeccably dressed, Shacklebolt possessed a commanding presence that many Aurors twice his age lacked. King liked him quite a bit.

"Hello Bill," Shacklebolt said in his slow, methodical voice as he approached. "How have you been?"

"Oh, you know," King replied, "I've got knees that buckle and belts that don't, but besides that life's been just peachy."

It was a tired joke, and Shacklebolt didn't laugh, but he did flash King a large, square grin. "You should not talk like that old friend," he said. "I, for one, hope that you will stay with us for as long as possible. We need all the experience we can get."

"Ah, then recruitment is still…?" King let the question hang.

"Yes, stymied." Shacklebolt replied.

"Well that's all…" King paused. "Shouldn't speak of that, I guess. So what do you have for me Kingsley?"

Shacklebolt handed King a few pages of parchment fastened together at the corner with a Stick It Charm. On the first page was written the words "Recipient: Auror Department," and underneath that, "Sender: Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office." Across both lines a stamp had been applied that read "HASTE." "About three hours ago Detection found traces of what appeared to be a large number of enchanted objects inside a Muggle household. The information was sent to the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, and Arthur Weasley, head of that department, forwarded the information to us."

King flipped quickly through the documents and sighed. "I can already see where this is going, but I'm not going to admit it until I hear the official word."

Shacklebolt grinned again. "That is correct. The Chief requested you personally, since you are one of the best we have with memory magic." Seeing King's glum expression he clapped him on the back and said cheerfully, "Stop looking so down, it is overtime! Overtime!"

As the two men walked together toward the Ministry lobby Shacklebolt filled King in on the details of the assignment. "Surveillance discovered that the Muggles in question left their home early this morning and were last seen traveling west several hours away. It seems that they intend to be gone for some time, but to be safe we should complete the assignment before tomorrow morning."

When they reached the Apparation point Shacklebolt shook King's hand firmly. "Good luck Bill," he said. "We should talk again later."

"Sure," answered King. "Take it easy, Kingsley." Then, with a flick of his wand and a quick spin, William King appeared on Privet Drive. Another wave of his wand placed him securely under the effects of a Notice-Me-Not charm and King set off down the street.

It was a very tidy looking neighborhood. The identical houses each sat neatly in their places, separated from their neighbors by low brick walls at the front and hedges at the back. Each house featured a carefully manicured lawn and was well scrubbed, so as to be free of any mildew or dirt. All in all, King thought it was a very clean and inviting area. As he walked down the sidewalk toward Number Four Privet Drive however, he began to find that the uniformity of each dwelling began to wear at his sense of aesthetic. No wizarding community seemed so sterile and pretentious. Yes, the street looked far less quaint than he had first thought.

He became so engrossed in searching for differences between each house that he actually passed up his destination and did not realize it until he arrived at the end of the street. Shaking his head at his own absentmindedness King retraced his steps until he stood in front of Number Four Privet Drive. At first it seemed no different at all from the houses around it. After a few moments inspection however, King's veteran eyes picked out several details that set this house apart. Walking up the driveway he saw a faint glittering on the concrete that a closer look revealed to be the remnants of shattered glass. To his left in the grass were two smooth, round stones. There were no such stones in the driveway or in the road, and the rest of the front lawn was as spotless as any other on the street. The report had stated that the enchanted objects in this house were probably the result of a prank. Were the rocks and the broken glass connected?

Working his wand slowly so as not to strain the magic of his Notice-Me-Not charm, King cast a few detection spells that would allow him to locate nearby enchanted objects. Making an unhurried circuit around the house he found nothing magical in nature. He did find where the smooth stones had come from. They lined a path that ran around the right side of the house and led toward a greenhouse and several gardens. Next to the greenhouse he found a superbly kept rose garden. His wife had a rose garden as well and spent hours in it every day keeping it free of gnomes and making sure the flowers remained lush and beautiful all year long. As he admired the flowers something caught his attention and he couldn't help a low whistle of appreciation as he crouched and looked down the line of bushes. The row was clipped perfectly even, and the leaves cleverly arranged to hide evidence of the shears. Also, even though there were not very many flowers actually blooming, each stem had been carefully bent to produce a pattern of red and green that looked far more dazzling than should have been possible. He nodded approvingly at the gardener's eye for detail. Anyone who worked so hard couldn't possibly be all that bad. The neighborhood's sameness had been disconcerting to his wizarding senses, but perhaps Muggles preferred subtler forms of expression than wizards, who, he had to admit, tended toward exuberant extravagance.

Having finished his search of the yard and outer walls of the house, King approached the front door. Looking around quickly to see if any of the neighbors happened to be out, King tapped the doorknob with his wand and slipped through the unlocked door. He stumbled badly as he crossed the threshold. For several minutes he could only gape in disbelief at what he saw. The magical detection charms he had cast allowed him to perceive objects that had been exposed to magic. Those objects would radiate a pink aura, the intensity of which varied according to the strength of magic which had been present. To his eyes the hallway he stood in burned in searing, vivid pink. The floor, the walls, the ceiling…everything had been soaked, no, _drowned _in magic. His surprise was not so much at the intensity of the glow, as he had seen its like before, but that he was seeing it here, in a Muggle household. The magical target practice ranges at Auror headquarters glowed in a similar fashion when viewed with the detection spell he was currently using. More surprising was the fact that, as he ran every test he could recall, he could not gind a single specific enchantment. Every exposed surface, from the floor to the flowerpot (beside the…what was it again? The telephone right?) had been bathed in magic but he could not find what the magic had been used for. With the amount of feedback his detection spell was getting he had expected something like walls that reached out to grab him or an infinite hallway. Instead he found noth…

King's thoughts were derailed suddenly. With his left hand he had reached out to touch the wall, and now his hand was buried in the paneling to the wrist. He tugged at it, but it would not budge. There was no pain. In fact, he could not feel his hand at all. It was as though the wall was part of his body, and always had been. Growing fearful, he tentatively looked to his left. The front door was no longer visible. The hardwood floor and paneled walls stretched as far as he could see, eventually bending downward out of sight. He swallowed heavily at seeing a horizon line inside a house. The same view greeted him when he looked to his right, and from somewhere down that endless corridor a hollow, tuneless whistle echoed forlornly. There was an aching hunger in that sound that turned his stomach so violently that he had to bite down on his tongue to keep from heaving up his lunch. A wave of dread rolled over him. Had he stumbled into a trap? Shaking his head vigorously in disbelief King raised his wand to attempt a counter curse. He had always taken being right handed for granted, but now he was more grateful than he could possibly describe.

When he opened his eyes however, the never-ending hallway was gone. His fingers rested lightly on the wall, and for several breathless moments he stared at them stupidly. On it. Not in it. With a start he yanked his hand away as though burned. Counting backward from ten King slowly felt his heartbeat return to normal. The hallway looked as it had before, brilliant pink but otherwise harmless. Thinking over what had just happened he realized that the magic had seemed to respond to what he had been thinking. It was beginning to look less and less like prank magic and more like accidental magic. There was no spell he knew of that would respond to someone's thoughts, but records proved that accidental magic was capable of effects that structured spell theory would deem impossible. Keeping his mind firmly on his investigation, King continued his search of the hallway.

Walking from side to side, tapping at the walls and ceiling with his wand and making notations in a small leather-bound book, King began to relax as no further unnatural occurrences manifested. Finished with his survey of the front half of the hall he moved to explore further, but froze when he felt his right foot sink into the floor. Hastily banishing the image of a just-shy-of-retirement-age wizard disappearing into some horrible oblivion, King grit his teeth and looked at his feet. To his great relief he saw that he was not sinking into the floor. He was standing on a welcome mat, somewhat out of place now that he considered it, and it was dipping beneath him. Kneeling, he pulled the mat aside. The hardwood floor beneath it was smashed, as though a bowling ball had been dropped on it. The Muggles who lived here had apparently not had time to fix it, so had covered it with the mat. That suggested that the damage was recent. Perhaps it, like the incongruous shards of glass and rocks in the front lawn, was connected to the strange magic affecting the house.

Placing the mat back as he found it, Kind stood and walked down the hall. On his left he passed a door which led into the living room. He noted that the pink glow was dimmer inside. A few steps more brought him to a staircase which ascended to the second floor. There was a closet beneath the staircase and, at the end of the hallway, another doorway opened into a dining room and kitchen. Like the living room, the glow of magic in the kitchen was much less pronounced. The stairs glowed brightly, but it faded almost to invisibility near the top.

Entering the kitchen, King saw that the far walls showed no sign of magical exposure at all. The magic seemed mostly contained to the front hall. Oddly, even though there was little diffusion in this room, several of the Muggle appliances shined quite brightly, as though the magic had collected there for some reason. These objects he attempted to disenchant with no success. Casting a shrinking charm on each one, he placed them into a small bag he had brought along for this purpose. He was considering what he would do about the enchanted hallway (he certainly couldn't shrink it and put it in a bag!) when he was met with another surprise. Stepping back through the kitchen door, he noticed that the glow in the hall seemed to have diminished. He stood still and watched for a few minutes before he decided that it was not his imagination. The magic was definitely dissipating, and this supported his hypothesis that this was not a prank or an assault but a case of accidental magic. A wizard either lived in this house, or one had visited, probably within the last twenty four hours, and accidental magic had been performed in the hallway. Since this was, as far as he knew, a Muggle household, he would need to document his suspicions and make sure an inquiry was made. Any young witch or wizard deserved to know what they really were.

As he stood thinking a strange discomfort began to gnaw at him. He did not even notice it at first, his sense of danger already engaged from his earlier mishaps, but gradually he became aware that his heart was beating more quickly and his breathing was growing rapid. Looking around for the source of this disturbance his gaze settled on the closet door, and he suddenly realized what was making him uneasy.

It smelled.

This house, save for the damage to the floor near the door, was as fastidiously neat inside as every other house on the street had been outside. The air had the lemony scent of furniture polish and, under that, the lightly antiseptic odor of stronger household cleaners. Standing next to the closet beneath the staircase however, King could detect another scent, one that made his stomach shift uncertainly.

It was the smell of a wild animal.

Not a single house on this street showed evidence of owning a pet. There was no pet food or dishes in the kitchen. What did this family keep in this closet? King stretched out his hand and opened the door.

Once, while on vacation in Scandinavia as a child, King had foolishly poked about into a wolverine's burrow, not knowing the creature was at home. He still bore the faint scars where the enraged animal had nearly torn out his throat. He had come very close to dying then, and now the memory of it almost killed him again. A pillar of light crashed over him, so bright it burned white instead of pink, blinding him. With it came the overwhelming stench of sweat, blood, and other things King didn't want to understand. For a moment he was nine years old again and peering into the wolverine's burrow and he thought, _'IT'S COMING!'_

He raised his wand to cancel the detection charm and restore his sight but something slammed into him, knocking his wand from his grasp and sending him tumbling heavily to the floor. He tried to roll away from his attacker but it wrapped around him and began to constrict, binding his arms to his sides. Away from the searing column of light pouring from the closet, King was able to see what was assaulting him. A filthy old blanket was coiled around him like a snake, and as it flexed sinuously he felt the breath rush from his lungs. He strained his arms and drummed his feet but he was no longer a young man. His face began to turn blue and the ceiling took on a vague, distant quality. The burning in his lungs began to fade and he struggled to maintain coherent thought. There was something he needed to remember, something that the memory of his childhood encounter with the wolverine and the panic of the sudden attack had driven away. As his vision narrowed to tiny pinpricks of light he finally recalled how his hand had stuck in the wall and the hallway had stretched into infinity in response to his thoughts. All he had to do was disbelieve what was happening the way he had before, but he knew it would be useless. There was no way to disbelieve that he was about to die.

There was only one chance. He had never been very good at Occlumancy, but now he focused on it with all his might, imagining his mind as an impenetrable fortress. His surroundings faded away until there was no light, no sound, nothing at all. He was alone, and he was a fortress.

Abruptly he could breathe again.

For an indefinite amount of time he lay on his back drawing deep breaths of air. The white ceiling above him seemed to represent some incomprehensible mystery. Tingling sensations in his extremities were noted but not understood. At last something tickling his nose caused him to sneeze and all at once the oxygen deprivation caused haze over his mind lifted and King clumsily tried to lurch to his feet. He was tangled in an old blanket however, so he only managed to roll around on the floor and bump his head against the baseboards. Frantically ripping the foul cloth away from his body King spotted his wand lying on the floor just inside the living room and dove for it. He rose to his feet waving it wildly around himself, but there was no more threat.

The pink glow that indicated the presence of magic or its residue had vanished entirely. King glared at the blanket lying in the hallway where he had thrown it. He could not believe he had nearly been killed by a blanket and a memory. He was thankful that the attack had exhausted the dangerous energy that had been haunting the house.

Turning in a slow circle he saw that not all of the magic had been drained. The moving picture box, the name of which he could not recollect, a clock on the mantle, and a small, black, rectangular bar with many buttons on it still shined brightly. Not wanting to spend another moment in the house, King shrank them quickly and stuffed them into the sack with the objects from the kitchen. At the front door of the house he checked his Notice-Me-Not charm then cast a complex memory charm on the doorway. When the Muggles re-entered their house a set of memories explaining their missing appliances would be generated. Stepping outside he walked hastily to the street, then turned and looked back. He could see the flower garden which had earlier impressed him so. He had been sure that a good person lived in that house. It made no sense; the elements didn't add up: the pristine yard with broken glass in the driveway and rocks in the grass, and the neatly kept interior with the inexplicable damage to the floor and the closet that smelled like an animal cage. That smell had seemed so intense, so overpowering, but had it really been? How much of what he had just experienced had been his imagination, or a magically created illusion? He prodded at his ribs with a finger and winced. The blanket attack had been real enough. He was going to have bruises unless he visited the infirmary before going home.

He had no idea what he was going to write on his report.

--

Arthur looked up quickly from the parchment he was laboring over and blinked a little owlishly at the man standing in the doorway. His eyes were unfocused from staring so long at official document after official document but when they cleared he gave a large smile and cried, "Hullo there Bill! It's been ages!"

William King gave him a rueful grin as he leaned against the doorframe. "Sure has Arthur," he replied. "How've you been? How's the family?"

"Oh, I've been doing fine, Bill," Arthur answered. "And my family is just great. Why, you should see little Ginny! She's eight years old this year; growing faster than Devil's Snare!"

"But way more trouble, right?" King said with a grin.

"So right!" Arthur laughed. "She's like the twins all over again. Anyway, how have you been? Like I said, it's been ages since I saw you."

"'Bout like usual," King replied. "Thinking about retirement. Had a real rough night."

"Really?" Arthur asked, sounding genuinely concerned. He stood up and pushed a chair toward King. "Here, have a seat and tell me about it. I'll help if I can."

King waved the chair away. "No, no. I'm going straight home. I was just stopping by to let you know I took care of the Privet Drive case. All the items are in the warehouse office, ready to be catalogued."

"Well that was quick," Arthur said. He glanced at the clock. "Merlin's beard! I didn't realize it was this late. I'm glad you came by, Bill. I'll just wrap up here and go tag the items you brought in before I go home."

"Sounds like a plan, Arthur," King said. He shifted against the doorframe uncomfortably. "Listen, Arthur, be careful when you handle this stuff. There was some real nasty magic on them. It's mostly gone now, I think, but you can't be too careful. Just take every precaution, okay?"

"Sure Bill, and thank you for the warning," Arthur said. "Have a safe trip home."

"Thanks Arthur," King replied. He turned and left the office.

Several minutes later Arthur left the office as well, having tidied up his desk and put his quills away. Pulling the door shut behind him he thought briefly of re-sorting the stack of parchment that had fallen down earlier, but with a tired yawn he decided it could wait until tomorrow. Tramping through the hallways of the Ministry of Magic he eventually came to the warehouse where various "low-class" artifacts were stored until they could be properly examined and classified. The fact that the warehouse had been magically enlarged so many times that even the record books were confused on the matter hinted at the level of priority such examination was given.

Entering the office Arthur immediately clapped his hands in glee. Eight items were lined up in front of him. There was a large rectangular box with two doors. He recognized it as a cooling cupboard. Opening the top door he was delighted to see that not only was there still food inside, it was so cold that it was all frozen. Next to the cooling cupboard was another large appliance. Arthur surveyed it with a look of approval. Muggle ovens differed very little from wizarding ovens, save that they ran off eckeltricity rather than magic. Next was a much smaller box which contained a round glass plate inside. The plate appeared to rotate, though Arthur could not quite fathom what it was supposed to do. Beside the Whirling Plate Box was a strange device that made him a little uneasy. It looked like a large, transparent drinking container perched on top of a stand with many buttons reading things like "High," "Low," and "Dice." Looking into the container Arthur saw that there were sharp blades at the bottom. The contraption seemed a little threatening, and he did not touch it. There were several more objects: a box with four slots cut into the top, a clock (not interesting at all!), and a small rectangular device that seemed to be meant to control something, but what really made Arthur want to dance like a giddy schoolboy was the final object in the line.

A square box, tapered on one end and sporting a curving glass surface on the other, sat squatly on the floor. A long eckeltricity wire curled around its base. A Vellytision! Arthur crouched down in front of it and tentatively pushed the button labeled "Power." Nothing happened, and he sighed. He cast around the office for an eckeltricity outlet, even though he already knew he would find no such thing. Of all the things Muggles did with technology, the Vellytision was one of the only things that trumped its wizarding equivalent. Though wizard photographs could move, some paintings could, with the proper enchantments, be given a life of their own, and Pensieves could record and play back memories, nothing in the wizarding world quite matched the Vellytision's ability to play a nearly endless stream of images, taken from all over the world to boot! Once, while in Muggle London, he had stood in front of a department store window for nearly three hours watching a program about the wildlife in New Zealand. He had been absolutely enthralled. Nothing in the wizarding world compared.

With a heavy sigh he stood and walked over to a desk in the corner. Picking up a roll of parchment he waved his wand over it and pointed at the cooling cupboard. The item was instantly recorded on the parchment and Arthur banished the object into the darkness of the warehouse. He did this with each item until he reached the Vellytision. The magic in the warehouse would pick up the banished items and sort them appropriately to await their turn to be examined and assigned. They would probably wait forever, gathering dust and eventually becoming lost as the warehouse was enlarged again and again. He simply could not bear to see the Vellytision disappear into oblivion in such a fashion. Dancing nervously from one foot to the other, Arthur shifted his eyes rapidly between the parchment, the Vellytision, and the dark warehouse. He remembered King's warning about the dangerous magic on these items and examined the Vellytision very closely. Whatever had been affecting it had apparently expired.

He dithered in indecision for a few more minutes before finally deciding that there was nothing he could do about the situation. It was his job to catalogue and store the items, not find museum space for them. As he waved his wand over the parchment he thought, _'A Vellytision can't be any harder to charm than a car…'_

Twenty minutes later Arthur emerged from the warehouse office and glanced around furtively. Seeing no one he hurried away toward the Floo Network in the Ministry's lobby. The Vellytision, now the size of a knut, was a small bump in the inner pocket of his coat.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time.

--

The moment Arthur stepped out of the roaring green flames into the Burrow's sitting room and before his head had quit spinning from his trip through the Floo he was attacked by two assailants. They wrapped themselves tightly around his knees and squealed at him in high pitched voices. Laughing, Arthur allowed himself to be drug to the floor by his two youngest children, Ronald and Ginevra Weasley.

The two children plopped their behinds firmly on his chest and, by the look of the grins on their faces, seemed perfectly content to remain there. Peering between their heads he saw his wife, Molly Weasley, sitting on the couch. She looked a little flustered and was holding the family clock in her lap.

"Welcome home, dearest," she said warmly.

"I'm home, honey," Arthur replied. He ruffled the bright red hair of his youngest children. "Hullo Nifflers! What are you two doing up so late?"

"Mum said we could wait up for you!" Ron chirped.

"She did, did she?" Arthur asked.

"Yeah, she's been in a right state," Ginny declared solemnly. "The clock pointed at 'Mortal Peril' for a minute." She leaned forward expectantly. "What were you doing? Were you fighting Dark Wizards?"

Ron's eyes began to shine at the suggestion and Arthur dismissed his children's fantasies before things got out of control. "The only thing I fought tonight was paperwork, kids. Sorry to disappoint." He glanced behind them to see that Molly was trying to surreptitiously place the clock back on the wall and failing miserably.

"Awwwww," the two children whined in dissatisfaction. Molly seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

"Say, what time did this happen anyway?" Arthur asked.

"About five o'clock," Molly answered, still trying to get the clock to rest evenly on the wall and no longer trying to be stealthy about it.

"Well that's odd," Arthur said thoughtfully. "I'm certain I was sitting in my office at five o'clock, though I don't remember exactly what I was doing."

"Anyway," he said, rolling to his feet with his children in his arms, "it's time for you two to go to bed. Hop to it!"

He placed them on the floor and bent to receive two rather wet kisses. Ron ran immediately up the stairs, but Ginny tugged his hand and asked for a bedtime story. Already knowing the tale he would be telling, Arthur allowed his youngest to pull him up the staircase. Molly smiled at him and he gave her a long-suffering look.

When they reached her room Ginny leapt on her bed and bounced twice before settling down. She kicked the covers down to the foot of the bed and lay there with her arms crossed, grinning.

"Tuck me in Daddy!"

With a smile Arthur pulled the blankets over his daughter and carefully arranged them around her so that they lay even on every side. While he was tucking the covers around her chin Ginny kept pushing her feet out and complaining about being cold until he tickled them and she shrieked, diving back beneath the relative safety of the blankets.

When she was finally still he sat on the edge of her bed and asked, "So what story do you want to hear Niffler?"

"Tell me about the Boy Who Lived!" Ginny demanded, her little brown eyes shining. "I want to hear about Harry Potter!"

Arthur sighed; he had known it was coming, but that did not make it any easier. He had told this particular story so many times that he had run out of fanciful embellishments to make it more interesting. His youngest child did not seem to care though. She seemed content with even a bare-bones retelling of the facts, such as he knew them. With a deep breath he launched into the Ministry sanctioned version of the tale, complete with all the bureaucratic terminology. Ginny listened attentively, though by the time he had finished her eyes were drooping to mere slits and her breathing was growing deep and even. Getting up slowly Arthur quietly blew out the candle on her nightstand and left the room. On the landing he was stopped by his daughter's voice.

"Da'," she called sleepily. "D'ya think Harry Potter…"

Whatever Ginny had been trying to ask him trailed away into an indecipherable murmur as she drifted off to sleep. Arthur stood on the landing for a while, watching her through the light from the doorway. When he descended the stairs he found his wife in the sitting room.

"Did you tell her a good one?" she asked, hiding a small smile.

"Sure did," Arthur answered. "Three guesses what it was."

Molly laughed and stood to hug him. "I've kept dinner warmed and on the table," she informed him. "It was silly of me to stay up so late. I'm going to go to bed."

With that she disappeared up the staircase. Arthur could tell that she was a little embarrassed, but he was glad she had gone. As soon as he was sure she would not be coming back down he quickly slipped out the front door and jogged across the yard to his shed.

The inside of the shed was dominated by a half-dismantled Ford Anglia. Squeezed all around the car were tables and stacks of shelving literally buckling under the weight of hundreds of Muggle tools. A table in the back sported an enormous stack of eckeltricical outlets and two boxes containing over a thousand batteries. Sucking in his belly to squash between the door of the Ford and one of the tables Arthur moved to the back of the shed. Clearing a spot under one of the shelves he took the shrunken Vellytision from his pocket and enlarged it. Pushing it under the shelf he threw a ratty blanket over it. Molly rarely came inside his shed, saying that she had no desire to join him in his madness, but he did not want her to find the Vellytision until he had come up with a good excuse for having it.

Returning to the house Arthur sat in the kitchen and ate his dinner. Afterward he trudged tiredly upstairs and was asleep beside his wife shortly after his head hit his pillow. Sometime in the night something agitated the chickens and they milled about their pen outside the shed clucking nervously, but no one in the house heard them.


	3. The Frying Pan

**Wild Child**

**Chapter Three**

**. . .**

Cold, brown-gray. Hints of green. Tight.

These were the first impressions Harry's senses registered upon awaking. He blinked uncertainly in the murky light, his brain running but getting nowhere discernible. Then memory unleashed a full range of impressions and with them, terror. Terror brought panic, and panic turned the cranks of the tried and true fight or flight mechanism present from birth in all human beings. For a boy of ten, fight is rarely an option. For Harry Potter in particular, fight had never been an option. Flight was always, _always_, the safest and most reasonable course. The flight mechanism was doomed to fail however, because Harry was tied up. Tightly. Faded rawhide straps wound snugly around his body, clapping his legs together and securing his arms in such a fashion that his shoulders were pulled forward slightly in the direction of his feet. Panic demanded a more vigorous response and for more than a minute Harry struggled wildly at his bonds but succeeded in nothing more than a miniscule amount of wiggling. Panic finally collapsed under the weight of exhaustion, and Harry at last had the presence of mind to observe his surroundings.

Brown-gray was a ceiling of earth and stone. He looked to his left and right and saw walls of earth and stone, tinted here and there by green, moss perhaps. There was furniture of a sort around him, low tables, boxes, shelves filled with hideous things that his eyes skipped over of their own volition but increased the speed of his heart nonetheless.

He was in a cave. The Thing's cave. The Thing that looked, at first glance, like a very ugly old woman, but was too bent, too sharp, too vile to be a woman. She was a Thing, a Wicked Old Witch, and he was in her home. Tied up. He began to struggle again at the cords that bound him.

It took several moments before he realized that there was a sound in his ears that was not the sound of his own rapid breathing, tiny scraping movements, or hammering heart. A low hissing sounded above his head. He was lying on a table in the middle of the chamber and was tied in such a way that he could not roll left or right, nor could he tilt his head high enough to see directly behind him. He froze in the middle of his attempts at escape and listened for the sound. It seemed as though the entire room froze with him. The sweat he worked up as he strained at the ropes, which had a moment ago seemed slick and hot, now beaded on his skin in frozen drops, cold. His breath froze in his chest, waiting. His heart still pounded, but it was cold, cold with dread.

The sound came again from the space above his head. Harry rolled his eyes upward until they ached in their sockets but could not see anything except a bit more of the earth and stone ceiling. Again the sound, and now at last he recognized what it was. The witch-thing was behind him, and the hissing was the rasping sound of her laughter.

--

The Wizengamot was a ponderous entity whose girth both supported and smothered Wizarding England. Whether it did more supporting or more smothering was at any time dependent on how the various factions which twisted within its innards moved that girth. As Chief Warlock of this rather pig-headed institution Albus Dumbledore spent nearly all of his time not devoted to the duties of Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to carefully arranging the subtle machinations by which he attempted to ease the smothering and increase the supporting. Some of those machinations were percolating cheerfully inside his head as he climbed the steps to his office. He had been all day Tuesday at the Ministry, the entire night, and much of today as well. He was tired, but felt that it had been worth it. He had made some progress on a few bills relating to taxing on charities and had mired down a movement pushing for more Ministry oversight in Hogwarts. He was quite happy with his day until he reached the third step from the top, at which point he was able to hear an ominous sounding chirp from within his office. Suddenly Ministry officials with too much interest in controlling school curriculum were the furthest thing from his mind. Leaping the last three steps altogether Dumbledore burst into his office and immediately felt the last vestiges of cheerfulness drain away with painful clarity.

On his desk a small silver instrument was spinning wildly and flashing crimson light. The speed and frequency were a code which he alone understood, but never imagined would be of any use.

The code told him that the wards around Number Four Privet Drive were gone, vanished as though they never existed, and so too was Harry Potter.

Instantly Dumbledore reached out with a soundless cry that echoed somewhere many leagues away in the cold air above some snow-capped mountain, and in a kaleidoscope of golden fire a magnificently plumed bird the color flames appeared in the office before him. "Fawkes!" he cried, and grabbed the bird's shimmering tail feathers. The phoenix understood without being told what the old wizard desired and with another swirl of gold flames the two disappeared from the room. As they departed another phoenix, this one formed not of flesh but of an ephemeral, silvery cloud that flickered at the edges with faerie fire, darted away through the wall on a mission of its own.

--

_Trouble at Privet Drive. Await my return in my office for one hour._

Within five minutes of receiving Dumbledore's message Minerva McGonagall was in the Headmaster's office pacing the floor in a state of mild agitation. Fifty-two minutes later she was well on her way to a full blown panic attack.

In three minutes it would be an hour since McGonagall heard Dumbledore's vaguely dire communiqué. The message had not specified what to do once that hour passed, but that was only because it was unnecessary. If he had not returned in an hour something truly terrible had occurred and it was up to her to rouse the authorities, as well as _other_ organizations, and lead them to Privet Drive on what she hoped would be a rescue mission. However, the idea of rescuing Albus Dumbledore from anything put the taste of copper in her mouth.

At exactly sixty minutes since an incorporeal Phoenix patronus had interrupted some rather pointlessly early preparations for the next school year McGonagall marched over to the Headmaster's fireplace and grabbed a handful of Floo Powder from the brazier on the mantle. She quickly lit a fire in the hearth and just as she drew her hand back to toss the powder into the flames there was a bright flash of golden light behind her and she heard the ethereally beautiful trill of a phoenix. Turning quickly she found herself staring into the pale face of Albus Dumbledore.

"Albus!" she cried. "I was halfway to Flooing the Aurors! Tell me what has happened!"

"Something terrible, Minerva," he whispered, and she felt her stomach give an unsteady dip at the sound of his voice. She suddenly realized just how pale and awful he looked.

Taking him by the elbow and guiding him to his chair behind the desk she said, "Whatever it is, we must call the Aurors at once. They will…"

"I found these," he interrupted. From his robes he drew two folded handkerchiefs and placed them on his desk. Unfolding one he took from it a long, coarse, black hair.

"What is that?" she asked.

Without replying he laid it out on his desk and waved his wand over it. The hair floated into the air. He began tracing an extremely intricate pattern in the air as though he were writing or drawing. Under his breath he murmured a spell that McGonagall had never heard, the pronunciation of which reminded her of the low hum of students' voices in the hallways between classes.

As she watched the single hair became two hairs. The two became four, the four eight, the eight sixteen, and soon there was an entire head of disheveled hair floating in the air like a wig. Then features began to coalesce beneath the hair, slowly at first and then more rapidly, and McGonagall felt the air leaving her lungs. When it was done she stared in mute horror at the image that spun slowly above the Headmaster's desk.

"A hag," Dumbledore said in answer to the question she could not speak. "There are monitoring spells around Privet Drive. From what I have been able to gather, last night this creature breached the wards and abducted Harry Potter."

"Then what are we waiting for? We should be speaking with the Aurors this very instant!"

"I have informed those who need to know."

"Need to know!"

"During his rise, Voldemort established close ties with Dark Creatures of all kinds. Many of his followers are still free and may know where this particular hag resides."

"And finding the hag would lead them to Harry, if they knew she had him," McGonagall finished, a tired understanding creeping into her voice.

"Yes. I want nothing more than to rally all of Wizarding England to find young Harry, but I fear it may instead give his enemies an edge. The blood protection which has kept him safe thus far has been broken completely. Harry's relatives disappeared, apparently with the knowledge that Harry is missing. This negligence was severe enough to break the bond of family that previously powered the spell."

"Those horrible people," McGonagall hissed. "We never should have left him with them."

Dumbledore's hand twitched towards the second folded handkerchief, then pulled back. McGonagall noticed his hesitant movement.

"What is in that one?" she asked.

Dumbledore carefully picked up the hair and placed it back in the first handkerchief, folding it neatly. He then unfolded the second. Inside were small, brownish flakes of some crumbling material.

"I…This is Harry's blood. I found it in his…room."

His obvious discomfort and the way he seemed to be carefully choosing his words raised McGonagall's eyebrows but Dumbledore hurried on before she could make any inquiry.

"I have attempted to use it to divine his location. I would like you to watch as I try again. Perhaps you will have some inspiration."

He waved his wand and a small silver bowl floated off a nearby shelf and alighted gently on the desk before him. Another wave of his wand and a flask of some crystalline liquid appeared next to it. This he poured into the bowl by hand. Next he delicately levitated a few small flakes of dried blood over the bowl and dropped them into the liquid. He stirred it with his wand until the liquid turned an even pink color. McGonagall drew in a slow, hesitant breath as he began to whisper another spell. This one seemed to touch every breeze and ray of light in the room and draw them close. In the sudden dim the pink liquid became opaque and appeared to shine. A wavering image appeared above the bowl, of space sifting quickly through a lens. Tall forms emerged suddenly like towering sentinels and the image began wavering more violently. Dumbledore's chanting became quicker and strained as the scrying grew more unstable. At last the forms became trees, but this clarity seemed to tax the spell to its limit. The image disappeared with a spark and a fizzle and the room returned to normal. The two of them sat quietly as McGonagall thought about what she had seen.

"I am passing familiar with the conventional methods of scrying, but I have seen none that have that effect," she said. "Why did it not work?"

"What you saw was no more than a slightly un-conventional scrying spell using the blood of the target as a focus. It does not normally manifest such theatrics. The way the air seemed to still and the dark drew close were not effects of the spell, but a seeping through that occurred when I tried to look into a place affected by very powerful and very wild magics. The spell failed because those magics act as a barrier which disrupts the flow of my casting."

"But we saw something," McGonagall said. "I saw trees as tall as towers. Surely that can tell us where Harry is?"

"That we saw anything at all is promising," Dumbledore replied. "It means that Harry is still alive. But where? That I do not know. Those trees could be any forest in England."

"But the way you were blocked…" McGonagall mused, trailing off uncertainly.

Dumbledore brightened immediately, but before he could say anything the door of his office flew open and Severus Snape strode in, his dirt and grass stained black traveling cloak whirling about him. McGonagall noticed there was ice in his hair and dirt ground into the lines of his hands. Wherever he had been when he received Dumbledore's notice, it had not been in Scotland.

"Professor Snape!" Dumbledore exclaimed with the first note of real happiness McGonagall had seen in him all night. "You are just in time to help me."

"What will I be helping with, Headmaster?" Snape drawled in a voice that seemed neither respectful nor disrespectful. His face was impassive and aloof, but the effect was spoiled somewhat by the way the ice was melting and dripping out of his hair. McGonagall noted that he had responded to the summons very, very fast.

"We're going to be scrying every forest in England," Dumbledore replied, already waving his wand about and summoning several stacks of rolled up parchments which were unrolling themselves and revealing various maps.

McGonagall instantly realized why Dumbledore's defeated attitude had disappeared.

"And the one we cannot scry…" she began.

"Is where we'll find Harry Potter," Dumbledore finished.

Snape said nothing. He simply pulled a chair up to the Headmaster's desk and began poring over the closest map.

--

Time passed in such a way that Harry could not determine whether it was flying or crawling. Terror seemed to have exhausted itself, running its course and leaving him feeling light and disconnected. He could see clearly the things he could not earlier, the clumps of herbs hanging from the ceiling, the crude furniture, the midden heaps pushed against the walls.

He could now look at the shelves, where the bones and mummified body parts of children were stacked in rows, some neatly organized, some scattered haphazardly, and some fashioned into gruesome totems. Many of them bore obvious teeth marks where they had been gnawed clean of flesh. He no longer had any doubt he was going to die, but rather than feel frightened he instead felt only a mild confusion, and little a bit of bitterness, that of all the wishes he had ever made this was the one that would be granted. He was no longer certain he wanted to die, but it made little difference now. He supposed that this was what adults called "regret."

The only thing he had not seen so far since his awakening in the cave was the old witch herself, though he could hear her somewhere behind him shuffling about and muttering to herself. The light of a fire now danced on the walls, overpowering the dim flickering of the candles. He could hear the pop-popping of the wood and an occasion hissing as the witch dropped something in it. He imagined that he would be cooking over that fire soon and once again felt an intense wave of regret. That this was to be the sum total of his life disappointed him so greatly that there was no more room for fear. A few tears trickled down his cheeks and he blinked at them angrily, but that did not make them go away.

When at last the witch's face appeared above him Harry was so numb to emotion that he barely reacted at all. She was as ugly as he remembered her from the night before, blue faced and wrinkled and bent like a gnarled old tree. He stared into her jaundiced, inhuman eyes for a long moment and she cocked her head to one side, seeming perplexed. She poked at his stomach with a long, wicked looking finger, giggling hoarsely.

"Gonna eat you," she croaked. "Gonna peel the skin off and get at the meat."

Her words elicited a faint fluttering of dread in Harry's stomach, but the numbness persisted. It was as though he were far away watching a scene in which someone else was the star. His silence agitated the witch. She prodded his ribs even harder, painfully.

"Stupid piggy! Stupid little piggy! Annis knows you understand! She knows! Screamed last night! Screamed a lot, like a cat on a spit!"

She raked her talons across his abdomen and Harry heard his shirt rip under them. He clenched his teeth defiantly and stared her down. She began to quiver in rage and stuck out her lower lip in a pout that might have been funny if not for the horrible hate in her eyes. Lowering her head to his left arm, she bit the fleshy part of his upper forearm and Harry choked back a cry of surprise and pain as her teeth tore the skin and sank into muscle. Fire raced up and down his arm, clenching the muscles spastically. He felt the pain not only where she bit him, but also in his stomach and in his throat, where bile was rising threateningly. He tried to jerk away but was held firmly by the ropes. When she raised her head blood trailed from her mouth and stained her yellow teeth. Every instinct was demanding that he beg, that he plead with her for his life, but still Harry made no sound.

Thoughts wove themselves from memories and unfurled inside his mind. When he was younger, when Dudley was not so much larger than him, he should have fought back. It would have been better to fight. He remembered being in second grade and trying to summon the nerve to give Amber Prunelly a valentine. He should have given her one, even if he was an incurable delinquent and she a nice girl. He was horribly sad that he had discovered he had courage just minutes before he died. The pain and terror of his situation seemed trivial next to that terrible sadness. It made him want to cry, but the witch might think he was crying for her, so he held back his tears.

His lack of response sent the witch into new spasms of fury. She danced from one foot to the other, shaking and sputtering ineffectually. She began tearing at the ropes that bound him to the table.

"You'll scream piggy! When Annis tells you to you will! You'll scream when you BOIL!"

Freed from his bonds, the witch who called herself Annis lifted Harry over her head and threw him. He saw an enormous pot as big as a bathtub suspended over a fire, full to the brim with boiling water. He had time to think _'So this is it_,_'_ then the water embraced him and he sank into the cauldron, a maw with innumerable teeth. His body seemed to explode and contract at the same time. Agony like he never imagined possible destroyed all coherence and obliterated memory. As he writhed and thrashed in the cooking pot his entire consciousness collected into a single thought.

_I DON'T WANT TO DIE!_

That heartfelt cry at the end of his life is what summoned it. Beneath the rolling layers of pain something indescribable swelled up, hotter than the water, hotter than the searing insides of the metal cauldron that blistered his skin. Harry snatched at it and got the impression of a box, or capsule, or a container of some kind. It did not matter. He flung it open and it was like stepping into a wading pool and finding oneself in the ocean, with endless horizons in all directions.

Harry released the ocean and let it carry him.

--

McGonagall raised her head from the bowl she was hunched over and rubbed her eyes tiredly. She and the two men in the room had been working non-stop for nearly twenty hours with no success. Their search of England was long complete and much of Europe had been thoroughly scoured as well. Even now Snape was scanning the northern borders of Russia while Dumbledore pressed his sight further and further east. McGonagall was delving deeper into central Africa, but she no longer believed the hag had _carried_ Harry anywhere. She was starting to think she had Apparated him, which meant that he could be anywhere in the world. Which meant that they were only wasting precious time. She opened her mouth to say something, but it was Dumbledore who spoke.

"I was wrong. I must alert the Aurors immediately," he said as he stared at the ceiling.

"Are you sure?" Snape asked quietly.

"Yes," Dumbledore replied. "We must craft an appropriate story that will not endanger Harry unnecessarily, but we cannot do this alone."

"The media will need to be controlled as well," Snape sneered. It was obvious what he thought of "the media."

"Yes of course," Dumbledore agreed.

_**BOY WHO LIVED MISSING!**_

_In a stunning blow to the heart of the Wizarding world Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, has revealed that Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, has gone missing from his relative's home where he was placed nine years ago for his protection (History of The Boy Who Lived, page 4)._

_In light of the ongoing investigation specific information regarding Harry Potter's disappearance was unavailable as of press time, but Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge has pledged the undivided attention of not only the Aurors, but all available Ministry personnel to the safe return of young Mr. Potter. An inside source has stated…_


	4. The Fire

**Wild Child**

**Chapter Four**

**. . .**

It seemed to Harry that the light swept through him and then whipped away and returned to whatever stillness from which it had come in an instant, leaving behind only a few whirling tails of brilliance that dissolved into sparkling starlight before fading into darkness. When he opened his eyes the first gray streaks of dawn breaking up the purple hued sky above him supported this. He had no idea that it was the morning of August 2 and that he had lain unconscious since early afternoon of the previous day.

His mind attempted to engage but conscious thought was instantly drowned by a burning blanket of agony that wrapped mercilessly around his body. His skin felt tight and stretched and every inch cried out in protest of each touch. His clothing felt like sandpaper against his tender flesh and Harry groaned in misery as he attempted to find a position that did not produce dancing needles of pain. At last he decided that standing up would be preferable to lying down, as it would minimize the amount of contact on his skin. It took him several shaky starts but finally he stood and carefully brushed sharp shards of rock away from his clothing. His fingers were swollen and clumsy and they were a waxy bright red. The rest of his body was similarly afflicted, removing any doubt that the hellish images of the witch and her cooking pot were some kind of nightmare.

Harry was seized by fresh fear at the thought that the witch was nearby and he whirled around frantically searching for some sign of her. His sudden movement twisted his tender flesh and brought him to his knees with pain. He knelt there as carefully as he could manage trying to still the trembling in his limbs and crying cool tears that left trails of heat as they flowed down his scalded face. When he felt sufficiently recovered he stood with delicate motions and made a slow job of taking in his surroundings. The urge to turn wildly in every direction was still strong, but Harry moved with deliberate slowness. If the witch was nearby he had no chance of escaping her anyway. Running in his condition was unthinkable.

He found himself in the center of a pile of rubble that filled the bottom of a swallow depression. The lip of the bowl was uneven, rising higher on one side than the other. Harry climbed towards the shallower end, twenty meters or so distant from the spot he awoke. When he reached the top he could see that the depression was actually a crater with jagged blast marks scoring its edges. The higher end was the half-shattered remains of a rocky hill. It had obviously been of decent size judging by the amount of debris scattered around the area and piled against the enormous trees that marked the edge of the clearing that had formerly surrounded the stony outcropping.

It took Harry a minute to connect this devastated landscape with the cave in which he had nearly been killed. He had no idea what had happened; his memory was flaky at best and became incomprehensible when he attempted to think past the cauldron. He shuddered at the thought of that black pot all full of bubbling water and his skin crawled with remembered terror and pain.

Shutting his eyes tightly to banish the distressing image, Harry resumed his inspection. Scattered here and there among the broken stones he spied bits of the witch's collection, pieces of broken pottery here, snatches of cloth there. He also saw scraps of bone, the remains of her horrible human totems. A fuzzy lump half buried near the base of the steeper edge of the inside of the crater drew his attention and he carefully picked his way over the loose rubble and made his way down to it.

Pushing a few rocks away revealed the grizzled visage of the head of a child, a little younger than Harry perhaps, his mummified skin leathery and brown. Despite its gruesome appearance, the sight held no horror for Harry. He felt sorry for the child, and in his mind's eye he saw the bubbling surface of the water rushing up to meet him again and again. He had escaped that fate. It seemed this young boy had not. His stomach lurched threateningly when he picked the head up but he bit down on his reaction. It was lighter than he expected it to be, and he tried not to think about why.

Taking the head to the center of the crater Harry cleared away the stones and loose dirt until he had a hard and relatively flat surface. He placed the head there and covered it with dirt and then began packing stones around it until he had made a mound as high as his knees. He was not certain it was the best place to bury the child's remains but he could think of no better. He had no idea where he was and the thought of carrying the mummified head with him was as disturbing to him as the thought of leaving it unburied. He searched the ruins further but found no more recognizable body parts.

When he had finished exploring the crater the sun had just barely appeared over the tops of the trees. Harry had never seen trees so big except in pictures. They looked as large as the ones in the United States that you could drive a car through. Now that he was finished with his self-appointed task he was at a loss as to what to do next. His search had yielded no more clues about where he was and even if he knew he did not think it would do him any good. He looked towards the rising sun and tried to remember what direction it rose in. Was it east or west? He thought it was east. As he faced the sun he could see distant purple peaks rising even above the massive trees to his left. That meant they lay north of him. If he were to climb those mountains he could see for miles and miles. Perhaps he would be able to see where this forest ended, or at least some break or clearing that indicated civilization. As he walked toward the tree-line Harry felt somewhat buoyed by the knowledge that by late afternoon or so he would know in which direction safety lay.

His progress was slow, the pain of his burns making him acutely aware of each brush of his clothing and of every crease in his skin. When he at last reached the shade of the forest he felt unusually exhausted. It seemed pathetically early to take a break when all he had done was walk a bit but he decided to rest a moment anyway. Not paying much attention to what he was doing Harry nearly sat on a pile of bones. Shocked and disgusted he stumbled clumsily away.

Smashed against the trunk of the tree Harry had been about to sit under was the gruesome remains of the witch's monstrous fish-steed. Bile-colored liquid oozed from the hollow eye sockets and pooled in a congealing mass around the skull. The ribs had been shattered completely and a glutinous mound of a grayish substance that looked vaguely organic had leaked out. The smell of decay made the air damp and sticky and Harry hurriedly tried to put more distance between him and the disgusting pile of bones before he began to gag.

Suddenly something stirred the air strangely and Harry realized he was no longer alone. A crowd of children was standing around him and all of them were staring directly at him. He looked left and right quickly but found himself completely surrounded. Most appeared to be near his age, but there were also very young children. Even the children who were not old enough to walk were gazing at him with an intensity that made his knees tremble.

A young girl separated herself from the group and stood before him. Harry tried to step away from her but found himself rooted to the spot. She had an unruly mess of short blonde hair and wore a simple one piece dress. Her eyes were clear green, like the pictures of the sea in vacation guides, but there was unfathomable pain shining in them. Harry gasped when she closed the distance between them and threw her arms around him. She brushed his cheek with a kiss and whispered in his ear, "You helped us. Thank you!"

She stepped back from him and vanished like dust blown in the wind. The places she had touched him were as cold as snow. His cheek tingled where she had kissed him.

A boy with cow-licked hair took her place. His face was still smudged with dirt, as though he had been out playing. He grinned and gave Harry a mock salute. A toddler hugged him around the legs. A dark skinned boy said something in a language Harry had never heard and a made a strange motion in the air. A stoic looking pair of identical twins took both of his hands in theirs and wept silently and expressionlessly. He felt their tears on his hands but they left no wet tracks where they passed, just trails of coldness. Each child disappeared as the girl had, dissipating on the air like fine dust.

_Thank you_

_Thank you_

_Thank you_

When he was alone again Harry gradually regained control of his rebellious body. He crept away from the area awed and scared, but broke into a run when the gray mass inside the monster's broken ribs flared into angry red flames. It burned out in seconds, leaving only a bit of ash. Harry ran north over the uneven ground, leaping roots and weaving around the massive tree trunks at full speed toward the mountain range he had seen from the clearing, praying all the while that it would show him the way out of this dreadful place.

********

Ginny kicked at a dirt clod sullenly and was mildly amused to find it had actually been a gnome, who, once he had finished tumbling head over heels, made a nasty gesture and spat some unintelligible gibberish at her. He beat a hasty retreat into some tall grass when she raised her foot at him threateningly. A smile began to form on her face but fled as quickly as it came when she heard cheerful yells behind her. She set her features into a frown and resolutely avoided looking back, no matter how much she wanted to know who was winning the impromptu Quidditch match her brothers had started.

Lacking a broom of her own there was little chance of her joining in such a game, but when Bill (the nice brother; how she loved Bill!) suggested she could rotate in her mother had vehemently decried the very idea. Too young! Too small! Ginny kicked another dirt clod. It was only a dirt clod this time.

Not wanting to be near the house, where she might become caught up in the game and show her mother something besides a frown (she had a point to make, after all), Ginny wandered down toward the pond. There she took off her shoes, stuffed her socks inside them, and sat on a large rock dangling her toes in the water. The day was warm, the water was cool, and she considered swimming but she found that her anger at her mother had suddenly drained away, its departure leaving her feeling lethargic. Instead she lay on the rock and sunned for a while. Later she amused herself by chasing a lizard that joined her in the sun, and then built it a house out of sticks and pebbles. While she was concentrating on getting the roof to stay up the lizard took advantage of her inattention and made good its escape so Ginny ended up pretending she was a terrible Nundu and made a great show of knocking the little house over.

The sun was past its zenith when Ginny heard a shout and turned to see her youngest brother Ron tramping toward the pond, his hand raised in greeting. Ginny matched his wave with one of her own, but kept the expression on her face carefully cross. He had looked as though he agreed with Bill about letting her play Quidditch, but had been too cowed by his mother's vehemence to stand up for her. She did not want him to believe that forgiveness was going to come easily.

Ron plopped down on the rock beside her and shot her an uncertain glance. She regarded him with a superciliously arched brow; a look that she knew irritated him because he had yet to manage it. Whenever he tried both eyebrows climbed in a fashion that said "comically surprised" rather than "coolly sardonic."

"Finished with your Quidditch game, then?" she asked him.

Ron fidgeted uncomfortably. "Er..."

Ginny stood up and stretched, turning her face toward the sun. "Ahhh, it sounded like a lot of fun!" She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and was pleased to see that he had shifted from uncomfortable and was making admirable progress into downright misery. "I had fun too you know, chasing lizards, kicking rocks. You know, tons of fun."

"Um ... listen Ginny, I ... Hey, what are you doing?"

Ginny stripped off her shirt and shorts and tossed them on the rock. He sounded so pitiful she could not help but want to give him a break. "Last one in is Nundu poo!" she shouted as she leapt into the pond.

Ron jumped to his feet and pointed an accusing finger at her. "Hey, no fair taking a head start!" he yelled as he struggled with his shirt.

They played in the pond for over an hour. Ron won the splashing contest but Ginny won the dunking contest when she stuffed a handful of gravel in his underwear and grabbed his ankles while he was distracted. When the sun became too hot on their skin they retreated into the shade of the orchard and amused themselves by trying to build a fort in the undergrowth. Ron got caught in a briar patch and cried like a big baby until Ginny dug him out, and he returned the favor when their shoddily constructed fort collapsed on her. When the light that shined through the treetops became the pale orange of late afternoon they heard their mother's voice calling distantly from the house and they abandoned their ruined effort at architecture and walked home together.

Ginny eyed the broom shed speculatively as they passed it and decided she would sneak a ride on the brooms that night. The thought banished any remaining resentment she held for her brothers. _'It's not their fault mum treats me like I'm made of glass.'_

Just before they reached the house Ron stopped and faced her. "Look Ginny, I'm really sorry about Quidditch this afternoon. I should've at least said something."

Ginny smiled and shook her head. "Don't worry about it Ron. Even Bill and Charlie are scared of mum. When I get to Hogwarts I can fly as much as I want."

Ron looked dubious, but conceded her point. "Well, I still owe you one, okay?"

Ginny smiled brightly at him. "I'll remember that!"

********

Away from the clearing the forest was an endless verdant shadow. The ground rose and fell in rocky foothills but the terrain never became rough enough to choke out the monumental trees and allow a fleeting glance of sunlight. The light which did make it past the canopy to the forest floor was tinged the color of old mold, dark and heavy and green. The strange looking light cast weirdly colored shadows between the trees and in the bottoms of the ravines which occasionally scarred the ground. Because the trees blocked the sun so effectively the undergrowth was quite sparse and Harry found very little to trouble his progress.

It had been a couple of hours since he had fled in fright from the apparitions which had emerged from the ruined remains of the witch's mount. In the intervening period his fear had settled and a measure of rationality returned to his thoughts. He remembered now on the night of his abduction how pale faces had begged him for help as he lay helplessly slung over the creature's saddle. He was not certain what had happened to the creature, or the witch, or the cave he had awoken in, but it seemed that something had blown them up good. Perhaps one of the witch's spells had backfired on her and not a moment too soon for Harry. Regardless, he was out of the pot and the ghost children believed he had helped them, so surely that meant they would not follow him and try to make him one of them. That thought did not keep him from carefully looking over his shoulder every few minutes.

He traveled in what he imagined was a fairly straight line, deviating only to go around trees or find a suitable spot to climb whenever he crossed a ravine. He was certain that if he continued as he was he would reach the mountains he had seen from the clearing in a few hours.

As the day wore on Harry's footsteps became slower and heavier. The uphill slopes seemed steeper and the downhill ones forced him to sit on his rear and slide carefully to bottom. By mid-afternoon the seat of his jeans were caked with dirt, his trainers invisible beneath a layer of mud from crossing small streams and splashing through stagnant puddles that he was too tired to jump or pick his way around. His stomach growled piteously at him, reminding him that the last time he had eaten had been breakfast at the Dursley's the morning before. In reality it had been more than forty-eight hours. He was also very thirsty, but it had been some time since he had crossed the last stream and even so, it had been small and muddy and not very enticing. When the slant of dim light had tilted far to the west and changed somewhat in quality Harry at last had to rest.

Leaning against the massive roots of one of the trees Harry allowed his body to relax. The lack of motion brought relief from the constant chafing of his clothing against his burns but this in turn served to highlight his other injuries. Stinging pain on his left arm and the outside of his right thigh stood out among the various aches. Examining his arm Harry saw deep teeth marks which oozed clear liquid and a little blood. He had nothing to wrap it with, so he desperately hoped that it did not become infected. His uncle had told him that bites could become infected once. Then he had beat him because the one Harry had bitten had been Dudley, who had been chasing him around the house for the better part of a half hour with a wet towel rolled into what Dudley called a "rat tail." By the time Harry had been enraged enough to attack his cousin he had been covered in sharp little welts from the snapping towel.

His leg looked, if anything, worse. The wound where the witch had raked him with her claws on the night of his abduction had bled freely and his pants were stiff with blood. It was beginning to scab now and no longer bled but it hurt to flex it. Like his arm, he had nothing with which to bind or wrap it, so Harry leaned his head against the root and sighed. He could only hope the injuries healed on their own.

His stomach growled again, loud in the silence, and Harry suddenly realized just how still the forest was. He had never been in a "real" forest before, but even at the park in Little Whinging there had always been birds or cats or dogs. The forest here seemed utterly devoid of life, though it did not feel dead. Instead Harry became aware for the first time of an oppressive, watchful feeling. He heard no bird calls, but if he watched the treetops he imagined he could sometimes see movement up there, though whether it was actually birds or simply wind moving through the upper branches he could not tell. Likewise he saw nothing on the ground, but something told him that there were things there, staying just out of sight perhaps.

Unnerved by this Harry decided that he had rested long enough and labored to his feet. He was still dreadfully tired but it seemed his legs would hold for a while yet. He just needed to make it to the mountains and then he would rest again. It was beginning to dawn on him that he would likely have to spend the night in the forest, because even if he saw a town from the mountaintop it would be too late to descend and travel to it. He decided he would spend the night at the summit when he reached it. At the summit he would be able to see the sky, and perhaps he would be able to find some nook or cranny to wedge himself into, someplace small and safe.

It was not until the last glimmers of murky light vanished into an impenetrable shroud of darkness that Harry admitted to himself that he would not be sleeping on the mountain. In his refusal to believe that he would not reach his goal before the end of daylight he had not searched for a suitable place to sleep, and now he keenly felt his nakedness in the midst of the wide, wide, open forest. Though the trees rose around him he could stretch his hands as far as he could to either side and feel nothing except the crawling sensation one gets when reaching into a dark space without knowing what is in it. He pulled his hands back hastily, imagining he could feel the brush of unseen things reaching for him in the gloom. He stamped his feet nervously without realizing he was doing so, dancing worriedly in the absolute night with his arms wrapped tightly around his chest.

At last he decided that he would not stop for sleep at all, but continue forward attempting to reach the mountain. There he hoped to find a glimpse of moonlit sky, even just a single ray of moonlight to relieve the sickening grip of night. Prying his fingers from his shoulders (they did not want to let go) he held his arms in front of himself and shuffled forward slowly, feeling each step carefully, expecting every moment to collide with something; a tree, a rock, a spider web, something warm with fur and claws. Several times he bumped into tree roots and slowly used his hands to guide himself around the tree. More often he tripped over the uneven ground. He did not run into anything with fur or claws.

Several terrifying hours later Harry heard the first sound he was certain was made by a living thing other than himself. Behind him, in a stand of bushes that he had pushed his way through minutes before, he heard the scraping, rustling progress of some creature. It seemed to be coming in his direction. It sounded big.

********

She sliced smoothly through the darkness, the stars below her, the earth above. Gravity reached for her, pulled at her robes and tangled its fingers in her hair but found no purchase. She rolled and the nighttime panorama twirled before her eyes. She pointed her face at the stars which were again in their proper place above her and rose swiftly towards them, higher and higher, as though she meant to alight upon their distant twinkling surfaces. The night closed around her until she could no longer see the ground and she thought that maybe her earlier vision had been reality, that the stars really were below her and she was even now descending into their realm of flickering fires and moonlit vistas. Higher still she flew and the zephyrs whispering in her ears became gales as she left the surface world and passed into a land where kajsa and kamaitachi and rarog danced upon the clouds. The moment she cleared the tops of the clouds the moon bathed the sky in crystalline silver.

Her heart skipped a beat at the sight before her. As far as she could see the clouds billowed into a glittering fantasy landscape, a vision from a dream. She had never flown so high. She hovered there stretching the moment as long as she dared until the shortness of her breath and the ice forming on her fingers grew unbearable. With a resigned sigh she at last allowed gravity its desire and dipped beneath the clouds, back to the surface world. She flew in the dark with a confidence born of many, many nights of practice and landed Fred's broom easily next to the broom shed. She stood for a minute and looked at the night sky. Up there she felt like a queen, the Queen of the Air. Here on the ground she transformed and became just Ginny again. Ginny who had to nick her brother's brooms in the dead of night just to get a decent bit of flying in. With a shrug she dismissed her thoughts. She preferred it this way, after all. Her mother would never, ever let her  
fly at night and would certainly not let her fly nearly so high. She suppressed a thrill of exhilaration at the memory of the silver cloudscape before it turned into a girlish shriek that definitely would have woken someone.

Ginny quietly put away Fred's broom in the broom shed and began walking back to the Burrow. The grass was turning damp with dew and she enjoyed the feel of it on her bare feet. Not really paying attention to her surroundings, she jumped completely off the ground when a sudden ruckus rose behind her. She whirled to see what it was even as she prepared to dash for the house. She relaxed a bit when she realized it was the chickens. Something was disturbing them, a fox probably. Running over to the pen Ginny grabbed a long, pointed stick propped beside the gate for just this sort of occasion. She poked her head into the coop and glanced around, but saw no predators after the hens. Despite this, the chickens were clucking nervously and milling about. She checked the outside of the coop as well, then around the edges, but found nothing. Just as she propped the stick back in its place a sharp burst of noise stopped her in mid-motion. Swiveling her head left and  
right she strained to hear over the redoubled clucking of the chickens. Several moments passed before she heard it again and this time she determined its location. The sound came from her dad's tool shed.

Perhaps the fox was inside.

Picking up the stick again Ginny cautiously opened the door to the shed and stepped inside. From the back of the shed she could see a pulsing glow from beneath one of the tables and Ginny suddenly realized that it might not be a fox at all. It could be some kind of magical beast, even a Will o' the Wisp, and that could be very dangerous. She backed slowly out of the door, intending to shut it quietly and make her escape when the burst of noise came again making her jump and cover her mouth with her hand to stifle a scream. Then a voice spoke.

"Is there something...could be the witch the witch she's dead she's here ... anything ... how long, how long?"

Ginny felt her blood freeze at the sound of that fragmented voice; a child's voice, frightened and lost. Fred and George had told her that Will o' the Wisps lured travelers away from the road to kill them. She was certain it was foolish to approach the light, but what if it really was a child? Perhaps they had been hurt and took shelter in the nearest building they could see. It could be one of the kids from Ottery St. Catchpole. Propping the door wide open, Ginny crept into the shed with her stick extended in front of her. She glanced back repeatedly as she went deeper into the shed, making sure the path behind her remained clear in case she needed to run.

When she reached the back of the shed she could see that the light was coming from underneath one of the tables, where an old blanket covered a vaguely square shaped object. Taking a deep breath and trying to swallow in a throat that felt stuffed with wool Ginny hesitantly edged forward and stretched as far as she could with her stick. The moment it touched the glowing lump she leaped back in preparation to run for her life. Another burst of the scratching noise that had first attracted her attention played merry hell with her nerves, but otherwise she could see nothing threatening. Then she realized she could hear more words beneath the noise.

"...elp! Don't want to...Help!"

Before she could chicken out Ginny stuck out her lower lip, grabbed the blanket and yanked it off the object. Delight warred with confusion. Bill had told her once about a Muggle invention he saw in London called a television. He said it had been playing a Muggle game that reminded him of Quidditch without brooms. The glowing box was definitely a television, but the glass surface held only a rapidly pulsing field of gray and black dots. The scratching sound continued, but the voice had disappeared for the moment. Now that she knew it was not a Will o' the Wisp Ginny was overcome with fascination. She reached forward and touched the glass surface gently and suddenly a picture appeared there as though summoned by her touch.

A boy was walking through a dark forest, his arms stretched out before him like a blind man. Towering shadows rose around him, trees like the bars of an enormous cage. The television screen flashed and flickered intermittently, leaving Ginny with the unsettling sensation that she had seen something unpleasant within the transient moments of static. The scratching noise was gone now, but it had been replaced with a low, murmured monologue that seemed to leap about without any rhyme or reason.

"moving, moving, forget the feeling, and stay very small and still because they'll bite if I roll on them. surely the moon is ahead, above the trees, but oh, what's behind?"

Ginny knelt transfixed before the television and listened to that voice for uncounted minutes. The things it said made little real sense but in her mind she saw visions, memories; a childhood fear of spiders, a centipede she had found once in her shoe (after she put her foot in), the way she did not mind having her closet door all the way open or all the way shut but could not stand seeing it cracked open at night, that strip of darker dark hinting things at her until she had to jump out of bed and slam it closed before diving beneath her covers again with the imagined feeling of hands on her back.

A new sound intruding over the television's speaker finally broke the trance she was under and Ginny was startled to find how close she was to the screen. With both hands she was gripping the top of the faux-wood finished plastic box and her face was so close that the picture seemed to be dissolving into a tiny, flickering grid of rainbow colors whose cheerful twinkling clashed horribly with the sickening sensation of dread that seemed to radiant from the screen.

The sound that emerged from the forest drew the attention of both Ginny and the boy on the screen. He whirled around and stared into the darkness, his hands dancing frantically and meaninglessly in front of him. He did not seem to be able to see the source of the rustling noise, but Ginny could make out a variance in the distant gloom, the suggestion of a large form emerging from a stand of bushes, now passing between two trees, now creeping across a skeletal mound of roots. She could not tell what it was, but the way it moved triggered some deep, intrinsic knowledge that screamed the presence of a predator.

The boy stared in the direction of the sound, his hands still weaving an imaginary and ineffective shield in front of himself and stutter-stepping backwards, seemingly unable to turn his back to the approaching creature and just _run_. Ginny watched in breathless anticipation while the lumbering shadow drew closer and closer while all the while the boy seemed to shrink further and further into himself, becoming small, crouching to the ground, hands no longer weaving but stretched out to full extension, fingers splayed wide in a gesture that screamed "KEEP AWAY!" At last she could stand it no longer. She pounded her fists on the top of the television and shouted at the screen, "Don't just sit there you great lump! Run for your life!"

At the very moment she yelled this, the creature let out an explosive snort, like a gigantic hog, and the boy shrieked and leapt to his feet. He ran pell-mell through the forest and Ginny urged him on with a steady repetition of "Go go go go go go go..."

Suddenly a tree loomed large and dark before him and Ginny shouted out a warning, "Hey wait, watch out!" but it was too late. He crashed headfirst into the trunk with a muted and painful sounding THUMP.

Ginny winced as he landed flat on his back but it seemed as though he did not even feel it. He was back on his feet in an instant and lunged toward the tree with arms outstretched. When he touched it he quickly navigated around it with his hands and resumed running. Over the labored sound of his breathing Ginny could hear the terrible thuds of the creature's pursuit. She peered intently at the television, watching to see if any more trees appeared in the boy's path. If he fell again surely the creature would catch him.

The next tree appeared so abruptly that Ginny gave a powerful start before she planted her forehead back on the screen and yelled, "Whoa, watch out! Go left! Left!"

Miraculously, the boy veered left and dodged the tree, but now he was about to hit another.

"Right now! Right!"

"No, not that way!"

"Jump! Yeah, that's it! Now go left!"

"Get up! Get up! No, don't look back, just keep running!"

Somehow it was almost as if the boy could hear her. Ginny shouted directions and he followed them. Her heart was beating too fast to think about it much. She could no longer hear the beat of pursuing footfalls but she was caught up in the triumph of escape and continued urging the boy on. It seemed as though he could run forever. Suddenly the trees ended on the jagged edge of a deep ravine. "Stop!" Ginny cried. "Stop, there's a cliff!"

The boy dug in his heels but he was moving too fast. Ginny watched in horror as he sailed into empty, black space. He hung flailing in the air for a heart-stopping moment before smashing into the slope of the ravine. He tumbled brokenly to the bottom and lay shaking on a mound of earth. There was a shifting sound and the ground collapsed beneath his weight and he fell. Ginny could see where the dirt had covered the roots of one of the trees, creating a small, fragile cave.

Things whipped and hissed in the darkness and black lightning struck at the boy again and again. He screamed, a high keening shrill of pain and fear, and thrashed against the roots but the nest of snakes he had fallen into was mad with fear. They bit at him blindly.

Ginny's hands were pulling at her hair. "No! Stop! Stop!" she screamed. One of the snakes sunk its fangs into the boy's cheek and stuck there swinging obscenely. Hot tears spilled down her face.

She pushed herself away from the television convulsively. Once she had secretly listened to The Adventures of Bully Jack on the Wizarding Wireless, even though her mother had told her it was too scary for her. Bully Jack told a story of how he fought a Curly-Horned Squid ten fathoms beneath the ocean. Ginny did not swim in the pond for a week afterwards. This, however, was more terrible than that by far. Did all Muggles watch this sort of thing? It was horrible. Horrible. She tripped over her feet as she dashed from the shed, barely remembering to close the door. As soon as she left the television flickered and went out. Just before the screen went black a burst of white fire lit the bottom of the ravine like a noonday sun.

Ginny ran up the stairs to her room, not caring if anyone heard her. They would think someone was rushing to the loo. She dove into her bed and pulled the covers tightly around her, being sure to tuck them securely beneath her so nothing could get in. She huddled there shivering until dawn lit her windows.

********

The darkness no longer clouded just his eyes. Now it was in his mind, stealing away his thoughts, warping time and space. He was in the park in Little Whinging counting ants. He was in the cupboard beneath the staircase. There were snakes in the hole. There was mud on his cheek and icy water flowing across his fingers. Harry drug himself across the shallow stream. He crawled up the opposite bank and out from under Mrs. Figg's hedges on Privet Drive. A red-haired girl was standing on the sidewalk shouting "This way! This way!" and pointing at Mr. Williams' garbage bin. Harry jumped inside. Dudley and his gang were looking for him, but Mr. Williams had disliked Dudley since he hit a baseball through his window six months ago. Harry was pretty sure that Dudley had thrown the ball through the window on purpose, but regardless, Dudley would not come into Mr. Williams' yard in search of him. He hid there for hours and eventually fell asleep.

As he slept a large shadow crept out of the brush on the other side of the stream. The stream created a break in the trees through which a little moonlight could shine. As the creature limped through the water that meager scattering of light revealed an enormous wolf-like monster. It was old, covered in matted fur that was turning gray at the tips. Its front right paw had been broken and healed crooked, leaving it crippled. In some countries it might be known as a warg or barghest. The beast sniffed the air cautiously as it approached. There was a tang of something disturbing in the air.

Harry opened his eyes. They were milky-white, the eyes of an old man on his deathbed. The fingers of his hands formed claws and something rasped in his throat which might have been words, or might not. Tongues of white fire licked at the wolf-monster's face and it howled in agony. It threw itself into the water but the flames did not extinguish. It scrambled up the bank and fled into the forest bawling in a terrible voice. It did not return.

Harry closed his eyes.

********

"Been a reeeeaaal pleasure talkin' wit ya, guvna," the ragged looking man drawled.

"Well I am sorry to inform you that I cannot say the same!" the ridiculously dressed man replied. "A civil tongue does not diminish your criminal stature."

The ragged man seemed greatly affected by this. His long, unkempt hair fell about his face as he bowed his head. "I'm supposin' you're right about tha' guvna. Supposin' you're right." He looked up suddenly. "Say, are you done with that newspaper there? Do you mind if I have a look at it? I surely miss the crosswords."

The ridiculous man fiddled with his bowler hat as he considered this request. "Well, I don't see why not," he conceded. He handed over the newspaper and left the cell. It was rather foolish of him to not consider what headlined the front page.

The prisoner's eyes grew dangerously cunning for a moment as he scanned the front page of the paper. If anyone had been looking they would have seen the face of a man in furious thought. Old modes of planning not used in years re-engaged without a hitch.

**BOY WHO LIVED MISSING!**

The guards had not even managed to shut the cell door before his plan was complete. "Say boss, a little help here. You got a pencil on ya?"

One of the guards stepped back in the cell and handed him an old pencil that had been sharpened nearly down to the rubber. The prisoner accepted it with a muttered "Thanks," and went back to staring at the paper.

"Seven letters," he mused. "Say, what's the capital of Thailand?"

The guard that handed him the pencil leaned over to get a look at the crossword. "Bangkok, I think."

Sirius Black casually backhanded him in the crotch. The unfortunate guard fell to the floor with a high-pitched groan clutching at his privates, his eyes like saucers and his mouth a little 'o' of surprise.

Sirius drummed his heels on the floor and rocked back on his ratty bunk with laughter. "Bangkok, get it!? Bang-cock!? Woo hoo hoo hoo ha ha ha..."

Three Stunners knocked him head down, arse up and silenced his merriment.

When he awoke he was in an extremely dark cell in the most feared portion of Azkaban: The Pit. Human guards rarely entered The Pit, and it was patrolled almost constantly by Dementors. Sirius rubbed his hands together gleefully.

"Excellent."


	5. Unbreakable

**Wild Child**

**Chapter 05**

**. . .**

Harry slurped weakly at the water flowing past his mouth. Though it was blessedly cool he grimaced at the grit of mud in it. Further from the bank the stream flowed clear of debris but he feared that he would drown if he crawled into water more than a few inches deep. He considered himself lucky to find the strength to roll over between bouts of sickness and drink the muddy water along the bank.

When his raging thirst had been soothed somewhat Harry rolled onto his back and waited for the cramps to come. The first time he had tried to remove his pants but was too weak to finish the task before he lost control. Now he simply let it happen. He was caked in mud and filth, and he knew it was the water that was making him sick, but he could no more stop drinking than he could stop being sick. He scooped a handful of mud and smeared it across his forehead, closing his eyes in relief as it cooled his fever-hot skin. He stared at his hand as he lifted it from his head. On the back, between his thumb and forefinger, were two round puncture wounds. A snakebite.

Harry thought snakebites were supposed to kill you, but he had at least four that he could count on his hands and arms and he was not dead yet. There were probably more beneath his clothes but he did not have the energy to search for them. Of course, it was possible that he just was not dead _yet._ For all he knew he was well on his way. He dropped his hand to his side and stared upwards. The stream created a tiny break in the trees through which he could actually see the sky. The cramps came. The sun passed overhead. Darkness came upon him at odd times. At one point he was certain it was night, but it seemed as though he only blinked and the sun was shining again. He grew thirsty.

Harry pushed himself onto his side and eyed the water. Drinking it might eventually kill him. Not drinking it _would_ eventually kill him.

Grimly, he drank.

********

Number three. Number three. Number three.

The Tale of Three Brothers. Slytherin left and then there were three founders. Three Billy Goats Gruff. Three Blind Mice. The number three danced in his mind relentlessly demanding constant recognition. Now it was dredging up every possible association (and being a very old man he had more than he cared to) and throwing them helter-skelter against his concentration, which had broken hours ago. Outside his office window the setting sun set the surface of the lake afire and within those flickering tongues of heatless flame Dumbledore discerned the message that celestial object was sending him. _Number four is coming. Look! Even now it is at the door._

Three days since Harry Potter was taken. The map in front of him swam before his eyes. He stared at it but comprehended nothing. Hags stole children for one reason alone. Three days. It was not possible that Harry still lived, yet each time he scryed the silver bowl containing the mixture made with the boy's blood it showed the same haunting image. Those cyclopean trees growing within a shroud of darkness, the whole image vanishing before it could be clearly seen or understood. The boy was still alive. If he was not his blood would be useless, showing no image at all. How many forests had he searched? For that matter, how many forests dotted the surface of Planet Earth? More relevantly, how many forests resembled the one from that vision? None, Albus Dumbledore was certain.

Scrying every forest in England had not seemed like such a bad idea, because he had been certain that between himself and Professors McGonagall and Snape the location would not remain a mystery for more than a few hours at worst. Now he realized it had been a monumental waste of time, but how could he have predicted? The indistinct image his initial scrying had produced had been the only lead they had gotten. The Dursley house provided no additional clues even after being swept by Aurors. Dumbledore had learned that Aurors had already visited the house on the morning of August 1st in response to an improperly enchanted items claim without even realizing who lived there. Of course, that information was considered on a "Need to Know" basis, so the fact that no one understood the significance of Number Four Privet Drive was no shock. What was surprising was the official report of the Auror on the scene, who claimed to have encountered extreme effects of what could only be accidental magic and had removed a number of items from the residence. Dumbledore had requested those items, but he was still waiting. Further inquiries had been apologetically answered with complaints about the filing system in place for such items, which apparently involved magically expanding warehouses that no one even knew the extent of anymore.

The Dursleys themselves had also been located, but not approached. Petunia Dursley had at last reported Harry missing to the Muggle police, so Aurors kept a constant watch on the family. They traveled at random, seemingly unwilling to return to their house. Petunia could be seen pacing their hotel rooms at night. It was difficult to tell whether she was worried about Harry or her own reputation. Vernon practically camped at the nearest pub he could find. Dudley stared dumbly at the hotel television. How they had explained their flight to the Muggle police in light of their nephew's disappearance Dumbledore did not know or particularly care. Aurors remained on watch in case the Muggle police discovered something with their strange technologies that wizards somehow overlooked and informed the family, but thus far nothing had been reported. Only the same incomprehensible behavior.

Dumbledore realized he was drumming his fingers. Had been for some time, actually. A strange pattern. His left index finger tapped three times. One, two, three. His right picked up. One, two, three, four. Back to the left. Three, four, three, four. He stilled his hands. No leads. A forest he was more and more certain could not exist. Not on Earth, at least.

Not on Earth.

_Not on Earth._

He was standing in front of his bookcases without realizing he had ever left his chair. Snape and McGonagall looked up from their work with black-rimmed eyes. Like Dumbledore, neither had slept more than a few hours since they had gathered in his office. He drew a book from the shelf and a look of understanding crossed Snape's face as he read the title: _Enchanted Places and Spaces_. Without a word he stood and left the room. Dumbledore did not ask him where he was going. He knew Snape's personal library contained books his did not. Dark books which could contain more information than the fairly tame volume he now held in his hands. McGonagall seemed less convinced.

"We've searched every recorded enchanted forest in the world, Albus," she said tiredly as he flipped towards the back of the book. "None of them fit the description."

Dumbledore dropped the book on the table before her and pointed a long, crooked finger at a short entry at the bottom of the page.

"No," McGonagall breathed. "That's a legend in legends. If he is there then we will never..."

Dumbledore agreed with her assessment. The very name seemed to sap his will. Mrycwudu. The Forest of Mirkwood. A refuge of magic that had disappeared from the world when mankind was still young. Legend had it that it was a place to which magical creatures retreated as man grew stronger, particularly Dark creatures, who were driven from their native lands and found no place to go. A savage land so old that even texts from the founder's times rarely bothered to include it in their histories. That McGonagall recognized the name was somewhat surprising. Even the book he held in his hands included it only as a footnote, a curiosity, and to be honest the book itself was of somewhat disreputable origin. The sort of book that might be welcome in _The Quibbler_, that strange publication that seemed more often the result of overindulgence in mind-altering substances than true research and reporting. Regardless of the source however, Dumbledore felt more certain by the second that he was on the right track. If not Mirkwood then perhaps some other secret space hidden from normal sight. But the image of trees rising to unfathomable heights from murky mists was burned in his mind. Mirkwood. It had the ring of truth.

********

Ron found Ginny beside the pond, sitting on one of the large rocks. It was the same place he had found her the day before, in fact. He did not believe she was sulking today though. He had hardly seen her since breakfast, during which she sat at the table with a somewhat dazed look and pushed her glass of orange juice around in meaningless circles. She ate only a few bites and excused herself and he had only caught glimpses of her since.

Sitting down on the rock next to her Ron noticed that she seemed to be dozing lightly. Her head bobbed slowly and irregularly, obviously fighting (and obviously losing) a battle against sleep. He poked her cautiously.

"Ginny...hey, Ginny!"

Her eyes flew open and she jumped to her feet with a shriek, nearly falling into the pond. Ron caught her by the shirttail and pulled her back. When she was settled again she gave him a sheepish grin.

"Jeepers, Ron, you scared me! Nice catch though."

He laughed. "I'm not practicing at Keeper for nothing, you know." He immediately wished he had not said that, but Ginny either did not notice his unintentional reminder of her inability to join in their Quidditch games or did not hold it against him. It was always hard to tell...

She became silent for a while. Ron waited, but she seemed unwilling to talk. Her strange behavior at breakfast and throughout the day had worried him a bit and now he was even more concerned. He had hoped that she would spill whatever was bothering her without any prompting, but it seemed that was not going to happen. He started to ask but found he could not. Now that he gave it some thought it seemed embarrassing somehow. So he sat beside her. Together they silently passed the time until dusk, he chewing his lower lip and wishing he were more like Bill or Charlie, who never seemed to be at a loss for words, and she alternately fighting sleep and staring fixedly at the surface of the pond. When their mother called them in for the night Ron was not sure whether he was relieved or disappointed in himself. Seeing no other options, he shrugged off his uncertainty and went to bed.

In her room Ginny eyed her bed with a mixture of longing and suspicion. She was dreadfully sleepy but feared the nightmares that were sure to come after the previous night. She had not been near the shed all day and so she was no longer certain if her horrifying encounter with the Muggle television had been real or a dream. Her midnight broom flight had been more enchanting than seemed possible. Had she really flown so high? It was a little unrealistic. Perhaps the television had been a dream too. Regardless her bed simply looked too enticing. She laid down and was asleep moments later.

She was awakened in the middle of the night by a strange pressure on her legs. She opened her eyes and found herself looking at the television. It sat on top of her covers, balancing on her knees as though someone had set it there. Muddy water flowed past on the screen and a horrible smell filled her nose, rotten and acidic. A wet choking sound erupted from the speakers.

Ginny screamed and bolted upright and realized it was morning. Sunlight streamed through her window. She looked at her bed. Nothing was there.

Three hours later she was standing in front of her dad's shed. Bill and Charlie had both gone to visit friends. The twins were heaven knows where, but she was certain it was someplace where they could plot without fear of discovery, which effectively put them out of the way. Last she had seen Ron he was chasing squirrels near the pond and her mother was inside mending clothes and listening to Celestina Warbeck. Her father was, of course, at work. Everyone was accounted for and far out of earshot. She pushed open the door and slipped inside. Moving quickly she grabbed a hammer off a nearby table and searched around until she had found several long nails and a handful of washers. When she felt sufficiently prepared she crept to the back of the shed.

The television, quite obviously real, sat under the table where she had found it two nights ago. The blanket that had covered it was still on the floor beside it where she had left it. She watched the inert box warily for what seemed like a very long time. It did nothing. No sound emerged, no image appeared. Hesitantly she stretched out her foot and touched the screen with the tip of her trainer before leaping backward. Again, it did nothing.

At last convinced it was not going to surprise her Ginny quickly grabbed the television and pulled it away from the wall about half a meter. Then she picked up the blanket that originally covered it and tested it in her hands. It was thick and strong. Perfect. She threw the blanket over the television then rolled the edges up to create a thick lip that laid on the floor. She put a washer down on this thicker portion, then drove a nail through the washer and into the wooden planks of the floor. She moved around the television and repeated the process until she was out of nails. When she was done she grabbed a corner of the blanket and pulled as hard as she could. It did not budge. Satisfied, she put the hammer back where she found it and left the shed. As she closed the door she blew a raspberry at the television, trapped securely beneath the blanket she nailed to the floor. Her father would find it soon, but she would just play innocent and the twins would likely end up with the blame. No big deal.

That night when she went to bed she concentrated on the image of the television trapped beneath the blanket, unable to move. She fell asleep with it still in her mind's eye.

She was awakened sometime later by a smacking sound, like someone with poor table manners eating with their mouth open. There was a weight on her legs. She kept her eyes tightly shut and bit her lip to stop a whimper. That smacking sound continued.

_Smack, smack, smack._

Slowly she opened her eyes. The television was sitting in her lap this time. There was no image on the screen. Instead there was an enormous mouth chewing loudly. Cold sweat sprang up all over her body, instantly turning her sheets into a sodden mess. She did not so much as twitch a muscle. She lay very, very still and watched the monstrous box with terrified eyes all night long as it gnawed hungrily at the air.

When the sun rose she awoke alone in her bed without ever remembering sleeping at all. The first chance she got she ran out to the shed. She did not go in, but stood in the doorway. The television was still firmly secured beneath the blanket. She shut the door, walked to the back of the orchard, and cried all day.

She considered telling her parents but was very afraid that she would get into trouble. It now seemed obvious that she was not supposed to have messed with her father's things. It was possible that he had brought it home as part of his job, and that the television was cursed. That scared her even more. The twins had once told her that anyone cursed by a quasit was sent to Azkaban, because no one could cure a quasit's curse and no one wanted a cursed child around. She had not believed them at the time, but what if they had been telling the truth? Did that count for any curse at all? Paralyzed by fear she could not make a decision.

That night she crawled into bed and waited for the television to come, trying to keep her sniffles inaudible. She did not actually see it appear. When she finally became aware that it was sitting on her chest she had the unshakable feeling that it may have been there all along.

The boy in the forest was back, and this time it was daylight wherever he was, allowing her to see him clearly. There was a terrifying skeletal quality about him and a wildness in his eyes that froze her heart. He was eating _something,_ tearing chunks and cramming them in his mouth and chewing viciously. When she realized what it was he was eating she vomited all over the screen.

She awoke to her mother's worried fussing.

"Ginny, dear, you've thrown up. Do you feel bad?"

Her mother lifted her out of bed and wiped her face with a cool cloth. Ginny looked at her bed and saw that the blankets were stained dark and smelled horribly acidic. She looked into her mother's worried eyes and assured her she felt fine.

She felt weak so she ate double portions at breakfast even though it made her want to vomit again. Her brothers hung around the house and her mother kept hovering over her asking about her health so she was unable to sneak into the shed.

That was fine. Her plan would work better at night anyway.

The day seemed both interminably long and fearfully short. While the sun was high in the sky Ginny nearly went mad with impatience. She paced fretfully and chewed her lip. Around mid-morning she snuck out from under her mother's watchful eye and went outside. Her family was beginning to look at her strangely and she did not want to give anything away. She spent the remainder of the day watching the shed. She did not particularly want to look at the old building, but she found she did not like the feeling of turning her back on it.

Later in the evening as the sun began to dim the day suddenly seemed far too short. She wished the night was already over and her deed done. The thought of facing darkness with that wicked television again made her heart pound and her stomach flip uneasily. That night she sat in the middle of her bed and watched the shadows in her room very closely. When the last set of footsteps thumped up the stairs she rose quietly and slipped outside.

The television was precisely where she had left it, securely nailed to the floor beneath the blanket. She used the same hammer she had used to drive the nails to pull them up. Once the blanket was free she pushed the television on its side and rolled the blanket around it until she could grab all four corners and hoist it like a sack.

Hefting her burden on her back proved more difficult than she expected. Not only was the television heavy, it was extremely bulky. She managed to get it out the door but she was sweating and breathing heavily by the time she was done. She ducked back into the shed to grab two more items she needed: an axe and a shovel.

Stepping back outside she tied the two items into the blanket. After giving it a few moments thought she went and retrieved one of her brothers' brooms. She grabbed the bundle with both hands and guided the broom with her knees as she flew a few feet above the ground.

She flew to the back of the Weasley property, past the pond, past the orchard, and into the sparsely treed moors beyond. When it seemed she was roughly equidistant from all sources of light she found a stand of trees with a small clearing in the middle and set her package down. From her pocket she drew a box of matches and two candles she had nicked from the pantry earlier in the day. Sit lit the two candles and set them on the ground so she could see.

She took the axe and shovel and set them aside, then spread the blanket out fully beneath the television. She tipped it over onto its back so that the glass screen faced upward. She picked up the axe and raised it over her head, nearly tipping over backwards from the weight of it. Taking a deep breath she swung the axe as hard as she could into the television. The screen made a dull, crunching sound as the glass caved inward. She swung again, attacking the frame this time, and bits of wood-patterned plastic and metal went careening through the air.

Again and again the axe bit into the television. The sides collapsed into the center and she smashed them to pieces. The inside of the box was stuffed with wires and tubes that spilled out like multicolored guts. The blanket caught most of the debris. She could care less about the tiny pieces that bounced into the grass. When she was finally satisfied the broken pile in front of her hardly resembled a television at all. She carefully wrapped the mess up in the blanket again.

Next she picked up the shovel and began digging. A half hour later she sat on the edge of a very shallow hole and cursed quietly between breaths. Her shirt and pants were plastered to her skin with sweat and her arms ached. It seemed that every step of this awful business had been far harder than she had imagined. She would not quit halfway though. After resting for a few minutes she hauled herself to her feet with the help of the shovel and continued digging. It was long after midnight when she was finally satisfied with the depth of the hole.

Tossing the smashed television into the hole was easy. Refilling the hole was nearly as bad as digging it. When she was done she stomped out the candles; they were burnt all the way to the ground and not worth salvaging. She picked up the axe and shovel, hopped on the broom, and flew home. She quickly put the tools and broom away and snuck back into her room. With great relief she stripped off her sweat-soaked clothing and changed into a nightgown. She could really use a bath, but that would just have to wait. She fell into bed.

It seemed she had only just closed her eyes when she found herself wide awake again. She was not in her room. She was in the forest.

********

Harry had never felt emptiness like this before. He had no idea hunger could crawl in so _deep._

He awoke in the mud on the bank of the stream in the morning. He did not know which morning. All he knew for sure was that there was a howling pit somewhere in his center. He imagined that pit might go on forever.

He sat up slowly, mentally searching for any lingering signs of sickness. There were none. The mud made a bubbling squelching noise as he rose from it. Where he had laid was a Harry-shaped outline several inches deep, now slowly filling with water. He climbed to his feet and to his surprise, was able to stand. Strange sensations crowded his body. He was weary beyond comprehension, yet he simultaneously felt unexplainably strong and stable. There were some old buildings in Little Whinging that sagged so badly on the outside that you wondered how they remained standing. He had seen the inside of one of those buildings once, and peeking out from the rotting walls was a battered but sturdy steel skeleton. He felt like one of those buildings; a weak shell supported by an invisible, unbreakable skeleton.

A rank smell made him crinkle his nose and he looked down at himself. He was covered head to toe in mud and filth, and his pants...he grimaced in disgust. Wading out into the middle of the stream Harry sat down in the running water, which came up to his chest when he was seated, and began pulling off his clothing. One by one he scrubbed each piece as best he could until they seemed tolerably clean. Then he sat still in the freezing water until he was satisfied that he was as decent as he was going to get without a bar of soap and a rag.

When he was done and dressed Harry moved several yards upstream and bent to drink deeply from the cold flow. The water quieted his stomach somewhat but the pit howled as loud as ever. It would not be satisfied with just water. He waited a few minutes, but there were no cramps this time. He left the stream and chose the direction he thought was north. The sunlight showing above the running water provided him with east and west, but nothing in this strange place had been as he thought it was. Doubt clung to his every decision.

He wore his weariness like a blanket as he trudged uphill. He no longer knew if his path would lead him to the mountains he had seen from the ruins of the witch's cave, but up was up, right? It seemed hopelessly immature of him now that he had expected to not only reach the mountains, but even climb them before sunset of that first day. His eyes roved constantly for anything that appeared edible. He was so hungry.

Toward mid-morning Harry saw his first "normal" looking animal, a bird. It sat on a high branch and peered at him curiously. It had feathers that seemed to shift colors, from a muted brown to bright greens and reds. He wanted to eat it very badly, but could see no way to reach it. He picked up a stick and threw it with all his might, but it missed by several meters and the bird whistled strangely at him and flew away. He watched it go sadly. Even if he could not eat it, it would have been nice to have a bit of non-threatening company. The watchful feeling he remembered from before was just as strong as ever. As the day wore on Harry saw a few more small animals, all of them similar to creatures he was familiar with, but different somehow. He saw things that looked like squirrels but were far too flexible in their movements, and birds that sang unsettling songs. Each time he saw a creature he attempted to catch or injure it in some way, not at all considering exactly what he would do once the animal was in his hands, only vaguely thinking _EAT._ He had no success whatsoever. If he did not know any better, he would believe that the animals knew what he was thinking, and thus anticipated all his efforts.

All throughout the day Harry plodded his slow progress through the forest. As the hours wore on he ceased attempting to circumvent obstacles, finding that all paths seemed equally difficult. He moved mostly in a straight line, climbing fallen trees or slithering under them if they proved too large, and forcing his way through underbrush rather than seeking ways around. Several times he heard large sounding creatures moving in the impenetrable veil of vegetation that surrounded him, but none seemed interested in him. He was afraid, remembering the undefined danger which had pursued him in the night, and as he crawled beneath fallen logs he thought often of snakes. However, his fears began to blend into a weary fog that rested about him but left no trace of its presence. His pains too, though they were many, faded into a distant, smoky feeling. All impressions, both physical and mental, subsided in the face of his growing hunger, which had no apparent limits. Instead of reaching a crescendo, as he had experienced before, it simply grew and grew, until he felt that he was being eaten by the desire to eat.

When night fell Harry did not stop walking. The invisible steel skeleton he had imagined upon waking that morning no longer felt so strong. It wavered within him. He was certain that if he stopped he would not be able to start again, so he walked through the darkness with his hands outstretched, uncertain of his goal, only knowing that anything except taking his next step somehow constituted giving up.

The jet blackness of the night was stretched with a tight film of silence, beneath which the watchful trees sheltered the calm promise of violence. It was not the malevolence of the witch but the simple contract of savage places: that which eats, eats what is eaten. Harry was beginning to understand this principle very well. It was not something to which he devoted conscious thought; he was quickly moving beyond such directed efforts, treading in the realm of pure instinct. In the night he abandoned his dedication to a straight path and meandered an incomprehensible track that wound and crisscrossed itself. If this caused him to avoid the stalking grounds of any large predators it was not something he did purposefully. Thus the night passed.

Dawn found Harry in a near trance-like state, but the light of the sun revealed a vision so surprising that he was forced to stop briefly to ascertain the truth of what he saw. He was staring at the tops of the trees. Sometime in the night he had reached the mountains, and was now already halfway up the slope of a tall peak. He could not see the base of the mountain; indeed, the trees, enormous as they were, were far below him. He now stood on a ledge, and beneath him he saw many places where he must have climbed nearly vertical rock faces, yet he had no memory of doing so.

Regardless of the strangeness of his circumstances, a blossom of hope bloomed in Harry's chest. His original intent had been to climb the peaks and search for signs of humanity. Now it seemed that his perseverance might at last pay off. Not caring to make decisions of 'can do' or 'can't do' Harry returned to climbing the mountain. Where he could stand and walk he did, and if he had to climb, he did. If the smooth faces of rock appeared impossible to scale he paid no mind. When he glanced beneath him he found that even the most impossible terrain had somehow been traversed. The hope he felt did not dim the ravening howl of emptiness inside him, but it seemed to steady him and cleared his head enough that he was able to imagine what he might do once he had been rescued. Or rescued himself, as would be the case.

He reached the peak as evening approached, and as he viewed the far side of the mountain range he felt hope wither in his chest. For as far as he could see in every direction there were only trees. He could see for miles and miles, until the sight curved away beneath the horizon, yet there were only trees.

He realized that he was probably going to die. By his count he had been in the forest for at least 3 days, but he was beginning to doubt that was accurate. There were large blank spots in his memory. Waking up in the rubble of the witch's cave. Dozing sickly on the banks of the stream. How much lost time was in those events? He did not know, but he did know that he would not survive much longer without food. Or water for that matter. It was extremely cold on the mountaintop. So cold in fact, that there was frost on the rocks. He began to scrape the frost off into his hands and put it into his mouth. It was bitingly cold but it quenched his thirst, which he had only just realized he felt.

He was scooping his third handful of frost when he realized what he was doing. He was surviving. Maybe he would die, but he would not lie down and wait for it. He gathered some kind of plant that was growing on the rocks (he thought he could remember a name for it. Likey? Licky? That didn't seem right) and put it in his mouth. It had an odd, bitter taste and dirt crunched between his teeth, but he was beyond caring. It did nothing for his hunger. Looking back down the slope he had ascended Harry recalled his earlier efforts at catching the small creatures he had seen. At the time he had been mostly concerned with pressing forward. He decided he would go back down among the trees and try again. However, the thought of going backwards disturbed him. Somewhere back there, hidden beneath the rolling green canopy was the thing that had chased him on his first night. The witch was there too. He did not know if she was alive or dead, and he had no desire to find out. Thinking it better to go forward than backward, Harry turned and began his climb down the far face of the mountain.

It was the evening of August 5th.

He climbed downward all through the evening and night, once again scorning sleep in favor of action. He felt a strange weightlessness in his limbs, and as the hours dragged on he began to feel a burning in his joints. It began as a minor itch and slowly increased in intensity throughout the night, spreading from his joints to the rest of his body. Despite the pain, he did not stop to rest. He had decided that he would die standing up, that he would accept no other outcome, and so he never changed his pace; steadily descending the moonlit slope into the darkness of the trees.

Distracted by the darkness and the pain, and once again slipping into a trance-like state of putting one foot in front of the other, Harry did not notice anything ominous about the area into which he traveled, nor could he have said how his steps guided him in blindness down a perilous corridor in which a single misstep could have been his last. Lost in a sightless, soundless world where sensation did not intrude, Harry was aware of nothing, not even his crushing hunger or the unexplainable fire in his limbs. He was roused from his stupor at last by a combination of changes in his surroundings. The sun, now risen, hit the treetops far above in just such a manner that the tiniest sliver of light penetrated the gloom and fell upon his face. At that very moment the silence of the forest, which had remained unbroken throughout the night, was interrupted by a quiet, almost inaudible chitter.

Harry shook himself and looked around. Illuminated by the lonely sunbeam he could see nothing except himself, queerly bright, surrounded by the vaguest suggestion of form in the murk. Stepping out of the light he found that he could see more clearly, and realized that this looked like no area of the forest that he had seen yet. There was light filtering down into the gloom, but it was so subdued, so strangled, that it seemed as though what rays reached the ground were not light at all but some paler, sicklier substance. The trees themselves gave the appearance of melting together, and the canopy seemed too solid somehow, yet Harry could not determine what it was that made it so. He realized that the watchful feeling, which he had grown accustomed to, was now stronger than it had ever been. The hairs on his neck stood on end.

Another quiet chitter sounded to his left. He whirled in that direction but could see nothing except the abnormally shaped trees struggling upward in the blue-green gloom. The deeper he looked into the forest, the more he became aware of an incongruity of sight, a half-seen blurriness that gradually mashed forms into a soupy palette of dim monochrome that hindered vision. Something rustled softly above him. He looked up.

They were impossible to miss at this distance. The closest one Harry could have jumped and touched. Just above his head, perched patiently upon a nearly invisible swath of web, was a spider the size of a large dog. He would not have seen it at all except that at the very moment he turned to it, it was moving, very slowly. It froze in flawless stillness the moment Harry laid eyes on it and stared expectantly at him. Above it, around it, everywhere, Harry's eyes found others, one, two, ten, twenty, the mottled hair of their bodies blending with the murky backdrop almost perfectly. _There were hundreds._ All boring holes of dread into him with their black, eager eyes.

He frantically turned in the direction he had come, thinking only _Escape!_ His horror-stricken eyes widened at what he saw. Now that he recognized what to look for he could see the web. It was almost completely transparent, giving away its location mostly by distortion of the light. It was everywhere. From the floor of the forest to the tops of the trees, layer upon layer of fibrous strands formed sheets of webbing. He could see no breaks or gaps, nothing through which his feet could have conceivably carried him, yet during his blind descent into the nest he had not touched a single thread. Now he could see no way out.

More soft movements brought him twisting around. He found himself face to face with one, close enough to see the wet shine of its bulbous eyeballs. He scrambled back with a gurgling yell of revulsion and fright as its legs brushed the space in which he stood. His outburst triggered something among them and the whole nest vibrated with anticipation for a moment before settling back into attentive stillness. Harry turned around and around, trying to fix them all with his eyes. They seemed reluctant to move if he was watching them, but he could not see them all at once. They closed ever tighter around him.

With a yell he dashed forward, dodging the webs as fast as he could, ducking, jumping, rolling. He felt the insidious pull as he brushed against the sticky strands. Jerking this way and that he broke from their grasp. An enormous spider loomed suddenly in front of him, galloping forward through a webbed tunnel, and Harry reflexively batted it to the side. He did not see how it flew 20 meters, bursting through several sheets of web before exploding against the side of a tree.

All at once he was outside of the nest. The light grew suddenly stronger and looking back Harry could see a great, faintly shimmering wall of webbing wrapped like a gigantic cocoon around an enormous patch of forest. He continued running, nearly crying with relief as the light grew brighter and brighter as the trees grew further and further apart. Soon the trees were so far apart that he could see the sky, and they appeared to be growing smaller. He was sprinting with wild abandon, both to escape the lingering shudders of horror and just to run and be alive. The blue of the sky seemed like an unbelievably amazing sight after the darkness beneath the trees with the spiders.

He stumbled as he ran, and for just a moment he was not watching where he was going. In the next moment he found himself suspended above the ground. He worked his legs in confusion, but his feet remained a few inches off the ground. His arms would not move the way he wanted them to either. A few thick, nearly transparent strands crossed in front of his face. The slow, dawning dread was like trickles of ice water starting at the crown of his head and wriggling down liquidly to the soles of his feet. Every muscle in his body tightened in terror-stricken expectation. He held very still.

The web vibrated very, very gently.

Harry turned his head up, against the pull of the web. It was there, about 3 meters above him, perhaps the size of a German Shepherd. It crouched with its legs pulled up around it and peered at Harry from its position in the branches of the tree. The web began to sway, softly at first, but harder with each moment, and Harry realized it was his own rapid breathing and pounding heartbeat that shook him. He tried desperately to bring himself under control, fearing the movement would start the whole terrible event, but he could not. With ghastly placidity the spider stretched out one long leg and struck the web with it, setting the whole fibrous structure to quivering, as if testing for some condition known only to itself.

The sight of its movement broke Harry's control. He jerked savagely at the clinging threads and the spider, reacting to this, did not so much as crawl as it appeared to fly down the web. It was on him in a moment and Harry had only the barest instant to cry "NO!"

There was a white flash and the smell of smoke and suddenly he was falling on the ground, free of the awful trap. Even as he stumbled to his feet however, something hit him in the stomach and pitched him over. He had the quickest visual impression of something descending and slammed his hands upward, catching the spider's thrusting head just before its trembling fangs pierced his chest. The two remained frozen in that gruesome tableau, eye to eye. The spider's legs groped beneath Harry, trying work under him and around his back to complete a deadly embrace and its bloated abdomen beat against his legs. Harry strained with all his might against its primitive strength. The burning in his arms increased until he thought he could actually feel the heat radiating off them.

It happened suddenly, without preamble. A thought, shocking in its clarity, drove all of Harry's fear away. _The spider could not win._

Though his arms felt as though they might ignite, though he was spent from sickness and hunger and lack of sleep, he had more strength yet. An ocean, an ocean of fire flowed inside him. He could not explain it. With a roar he flung out his arms and the spider was sent spinning away to land crazily on the ground.

It tried to right itself and run away, but Harry was on it instantly, driving it to the ground with his knees. He grabbed one of the thrashing legs and swung the creature over his shoulder in a blistering arc to bring it smashing to the ground. The leg snapped off with a splintering sound as the spider bounced back into the air from the force of the impact. Harry flung the leg aside and kicked out hard, catching it center mass and slamming it against a tree. As it rolled brokenly down to the ground Harry made a running leap and landed with both feet on its globoid body. The exoskeleton split with a sharp crack and the spider's liquid innards splashed out. It struggled weakly beneath his feet, stretching and twisting its head to try and plunge it fangs into Harry's legs, but he ground its head under his trainer and held it there until its remaining legs ceased shaking and curled inward.

Harry stepped away from the corpse and immediately fell to his knees. The burning was unbearable now, but even worse was the hunger. A spear of emptiness pierced his middle, a grating, hollow wound. He rolled in the grass, hardly able to think over the bellow of the pit within. The sensation of falling inward was so strong that he believed he might simply vanish.

By chance his eyes fell on the broken leg. From its shattered end a pale white strip of muscle showed. It was in his hands before he knew he had moved. With a cry he flung it away and fled into the brush.

He returned five minutes later, creeping close to the ground. His face bore a wild-eyed, frenzied look. He snatched up the leg and bit down viciously on the muscle, tearing it loose. It tasted horrible and had the consistency of wet yarn, but there was no more stopping him. He threw the leg to the ground and pummeled it with his fists, smashing the carapace and stripping away anything soft enough to chew. When he was done he turned to the rest of the corpse and fell on it ravenously. All the while the burning sensation in his body dwindled, as did the feeling of being relentlessly drawn inward.

He thought he heard a retching sound, like someone throwing up, but after curiously checking to see if it was him - and finding it was not - he decided it was his imagination.

When he was done he noticed that the watchful feeling had changed. First it had been as the eyes of a predator observing its prey. Now those hidden eyes drew further back, cautiously.

But still they watched.


	6. A Sirius Interlude

**Wild Child**

**Chapter 06**

**. . .**

The heat was on, and it was not just the August sunlight that was causing it, though Sirius Black would have paid good galleons to make it so. He crouched beside a large garbage bin in a filthy alley and tried not to gag from the smell as he futilely scrubbed at his leg with a stolen wand. The former owner of the wand was a young Auror who was now taking a blunt-force trauma induced nap under a stack of newspapers in a park two blocks away. Normally, Sirius would have been laughing it up over securing himself a wand, but before he had "encouraged" the Auror to take the rest of the day off the brat had hit him with some kind of marking spell. Now his leg was glowing lurid purple.

To make matters worse, Sirius had never held a more incompatible wand. The thing was completely useless. He had been trying to dispel the mark for the better part of fifteen minutes now and had only managed to sear the edges of his already tattered pants.

"Things are looking grim, Padfoot," he muttered as he stabbed the wand at his pants again. "Well, everything but you, that is. You won't be looking like a Grim at all if you don't fix this stupid, stupid spell."

The wand erupted in a shower of sparks and he yelped as they landed in his clothes and began smoldering. He jumped up and batted them out quickly, realizing only too late that he was drawing attention to himself. There was a shout at the far end of the alley and Sirius looked up from his smoking clothes to see a red-robed wizard pointing a wand at him.

With a curse Sirius leaped over the garbage bin as a streak of red light splashed against the ground where he had just been standing. Grabbing the edge of the bin he spun it sideways and kicked it over, blocking most of the alley. He dashed out of the alley and into the street, nearly knocking over a little old lady as he did.

"Sorry ma'am!" he shouted over his should as she railed at him in a high-pitched voice about youth, bums, morals, and gardens, though how the last had anything to do with the others Sirius could not fathom. A moment later his pursuer _did_ knock the agitated woman to the ground, and did not even stop to help her.

"Scum sucking Hit Wizard!" Sirius shouted as he dodged another red spell. Jerk did not care who saw him use magic; the stinking Ministry would cover everything up nicely later. Another barrage of spells followed his insult, fiercer than anything yet. Apparently the guy did not like being called a scum sucker. Or maybe he hated his job.

Regardless, two nearby pedestrians were hit with Stunners and several people ran into the street in a panic, nearly causing a car wreck. In the confusion that followed Sirius lost his attacker by slipping into another alley and onto the next street.

He continued to move further from the area of discovery, knowing that Aurors and Hit Wizards would shortly begin an expanding search from that point. He kept to the alleys as much as possible but was forced to cross the streets in the open often. He needed to get out of the city. Once outside he could use his animagus magic to transform into a dog and make a run for it. He longed to transform right away and embrace the safety and anonymity the form afforded him but could not as long as the glowing mark remained. The last thing he needed to do was advertise that he was an animagus by running around with a huge, gleaming sign (literally) announcing his identity.

A little more than an hour after his run-in with the Hit Wizard Sirius thought he had at last moved beyond the threat of immediate detection. Emerging from an alley, he set off down the street at a fast pace. Ahead was a road sign that indicated a highway, his ticket out of town. As he walked he pulled his coat around himself despite the heat. Once upon a time it had been a long trench coat, but that was probably in another life, before it came into possession of the bum that Sirius had nicked it from a few days ago. Now it was in ragged shape and barely covered him, but it dimmed the light of the mark somewhat. He picked up his pace, eager to reach the highway. Once there, he could inconspicuously transform and place his enchanted leg towards the guardrail. He would hug the rail all the way out of town, and no one would pay a bit of attention to a ragged old stray mutt meandering down the road.

Sirius thought it sounded like a pretty good plan. Not perfect, but so far none of his escape plans had been perfect, and yet he was still "running amok" as the Daily Prophet put it. When he buried the Auror he had taken the wand from under newspapers he had carefully arranged a copy of some Muggle paper over the man's face so that the story announcing his escape was proudly displayed. It was not a very good story, Sirius thought, since it did not mention that he was a wizard, had escaped from the most inescapable prison in history, and was ruggedly handsome. Unfortunately, he never got to test his latest plan.

A line of cars was rolling down the access road when he reached it. Sirius tapped his foot impatiently, looking furtively up and down the sidewalk as he waited for a break in traffic. Just when he thought he saw an opening approaching, movement to his left drew his attention. Not ten meters down the walk an Auror emerged from an alleyway in a flurry of robes. Sirius felt like he had swallowed his heart as he tried to hide his profile behind a streetlamp. He looked to his right and saw two more robed figures step around the next corner. None had seen him yet. Jumping out into the traffic would be a fine way to commit suicide, get caught, or worse, both at the same time. That would make a crappy obituary.

Left with no choice, he fell back three quick steps and yanked open the door of the shop behind him, ducking inside.

It was a brightly lit place, lots of white, very modern. Clean edges too, and plenty of them, because there were plenty of bookshelves. This was a bookstore.

Having no desire to be near the large display windows when the Aurors and Hit Wizards outside walked by, Sirius retreated further into the disconcertingly neat and ordered rows of books. This was nothing like the bookstores and libraries he was used to, never mind that he had not seen a book in nine years. Where were the cobwebs and spiders, the dust, the bad smell, and why was it so bloody well lit? He was not the bookish sort to begin with, and this fastidiously clean shop was setting his nerves to dancing.

Suddenly feeling quite tired as the adrenaline rush from his close brush outside began to wear, Sirius flopped down in an overstuffed chair near the back of the store. Thankfully there were no employees around to complain about his appearance and try to chase him out. As he sprawled there lazily he began to notice something very incongruous. To his left was a stack of books.

No, not just a stack of books. Several stacks. Huge stacks. He looked at the neat, orderly, shelves. He looked back at the haphazard stack of books. It was crooked, unorganized, and enormous. Almost monolithic, even. Was there another chair buried under all that?

All at once the bookstore felt a little more comfortable. Still a bit stuffy, but the little island of chaos beside him made it tolerable. He reached over and pulled a large volume off the top of the stack and found himself, quite unexpectedly, staring into a pair of wide, innocent, brown eyes. So there _was_ a chair down there, and a little girl was sitting in it, all but obscured by the mounds of books she had piled around herself.

'_What a little oddball,' _Sirius thought, and liked her immediately. "You, ah, mind if I read this?" he asked, hefting the book he had picked up.

An abrupt change of attitude seemed to come over her. She eyed him suspiciously for a long (and rather uncomfortable, if anyone had asked him) moment. Finally she shook her head, her somewhat frizzy hair bouncing with the motion, and scooted further into her stack of books.

Nonplussed, Sirius looked at the book he had grabbed and felt his jaw drop.

_Criminal Psychology: Crimes Against Children Vol. III_

He was completely flummoxed. The book suddenly felt absurdly heavy. It might as well be titled _Good Intentions, Betrayed._

He leaned back over toward the stack of books. The little girl was not reading. Just below the rim of her makeshift fortress she was staring at him intensely.

"I uh, that is...I don't like this book very much," he said lamely. "Do you mind if I choose another?"

She nodded her assent, and watched him closely as he chose a replacement. He scanned the titles very carefully before picking one up. He had never heard of _Atlas Shrugged_, but surely it had nothing to do with, well, that _other_ subject.

He opened the cover.

_Who is John Galt?_

It had been many years since he had read anything at all. He struggled for the first few pages. The words looked like random combinations of alien glyphs which would suddenly, coyly, turn into proper English and leap at him. It was confusing and a little frightening how primitive his own mind felt, but by the time he finished the first chapter he was beginning to feel sharp again.

The book was about trains. Well, actually, he thought it might not be about trains at all, but he had not read far enough to grasp the theme. Even if it was not about trains, it was the trains that got his attention. He loved trains. All the trains the book spoke of he imagined as being red. Red dragons galloping on steel claws merrily, but also a little scary. They began as tiny dots just at the edge of one's vision, obscured a bit by the ever present fog at the station. Their claws shrieked and with their mouths pointed skyward they chugged out deep breaths of blue-black smoke. Then came the howling cry, _"Choo-choo-choo, I'm coming!_" and the big folk would separate themselves grudgingly from the little folk, and the little folk would line up on the platforms pretending they were entirely happy to be shut of the bigger ones. Some were acting, some were not.

He did not notice the two Aurors enter the store until they were standing right on top of him. Stupidly, instead of simply stunning him, the two of them pointed their wands at him and one yelled "Black, you're under arrest!"

Sirius looked up from his book in momentary bewilderment before his brain engaged and interpreted his current situation. _Oh, bugger._ He sat very still, staring at the two Aurors. Both were pointing their wands at his chest. Both were standing close together. Both wands were shaking. Sirius had to stifle a burst of laughter. Two green Aurors.

"BLAUGH!" he screamed, shooting to his feet. In the same motion he thrust his hand through the "book fortress" the bushy haired girl had built and swept his arm forward, throwing a shower of books in front of him. The two Aurors shrieked pitifully and fired Stunners at him but both spells hit flying books. It seemed the sound of their own screams must have embarrassed them to point of removing their fear, because the next moment the two had separated and dropped to one knee, carefully leveling their wands in his direction. _Too little, too late, boys._

"Ah, ah ah," Sirius admonished them. "Nothing hasty now." He hugged the little girl close in front of him and tapped her lightly on the head with his stolen wand. He apologized to her silently in his head. "You wouldn't want anything nasty to happen to this cutie would you?"

As he spoke he backed slowly toward the rear of the store. A store clerk looked up from a novel as he approached the counter and squeaked in surprise.

"There a back door in this joint?" Sirius asked him. The clerk looked back and forth between Sirius and the Aurors. He seemed undecided whether to be amused at a couple of men pointing sticks at each other or terrified by, well, a couple of men pointing sticks at each other. Sirius fixed him with a glare and he decided on terrified. When he was sure he had the clerk properly cowed Sirius told him, "Run back there and open it for me, then come back up front. Any funny stuff and I start causing a ruckus, get it?"

The clerk nodded quickly and disappeared through a door marked _Employees Only_. He reappeared a moment later and pointed nervously behind him. "It's open."

Sirius backed around the counter, making sure to hold the girl between himself and the Aurors. He kicked the door open and could see another door standing ajar further back, the dirty brick of a back alley clearly visible. Mustering up the most evil voice he could manage he reached out with his wand and tapped the clerk on the arm and muttered "Exspecto Incendia." He was pleased with the effect it had. Shoot, it even sounded scary to his ears. The two Aurors blanched ghostly white and the clerk jerked a bit, uncertain what had happened. "Take care of him for me fellas," he called cheerily as he shut the door.

The moment the door clicked shut the girl bit him on the wrist, hard.

"Yow!" he shrieked, dropping her. He caught her again by the back of her coat before her feet hit the ground. "Watch it ya little brat, I'm delicate!"

"Let me go pervert!" she cried, kicking at him futilely from arm's length.

"I'm not a pervert!" he shot back. "And I take offense at that!"

Still holding her at arm's length he rushed out the back door and into the alley. She continued to berate him shrilly. "Deviant! Molester! Degenerate! Profligate!"

"Would you please shut up!" Sirius moaned. "And what the heck is a profligate?"

The girl looked at him strangely. "You're really stupid too," she observed, and immediately added that to her repertoire. "Stupid! Delinquent! Bottom-feeder!"

"Seriously, I need you to be quiet for a few minutes, can't you do that!"

"I won't be quiet! Help! It's a pedophile! Help! Child endangerment!"

"Ok! Ok! Look! I'm letting you go!" Sirius cried in desperation as he set her on the ground. "Just run along and don't make any more-"

Just as he set the girl down an Auror peeked into the alleyway, obviously drawn by the screams.

"Scratch that, I'll let you go later!" he amended as he snatched her up again.

"Indian giver!"

Sirius ignored her taunt and sprinted at the Auror with his wand to her head. "Out of the way or I do something terrible!" he shouted in as desperate a voice as he could manage. Not difficult, since he figured his desperation on a scale of 1 to 10 was sitting at a tentative 10,000.

The Auror jumped aside and let him pass and Sirius thanked his lucky stars that it was another green looking kid. As he ducked onto the next street a glare in the sky cast his shadow on the sidewalk in front of him. A red flare rose above the rooftops. Apparently the kid was not green enough to forget to call for backup. Drat.

Running full tilt down the sidewalk, dodging confused looking pedestrians and trying to keep uncovered parts of his arms away from the girl's mouth (unsuccessfully, to his great discomfort; who knew little girls had such sharp teeth?), he knew he would not last long. Any moment now Aurors would be on him like a crooked politician on a Malfoy or a Muggle police officer would stop him wanting to know why a scruffy looking bum was man-handling a well dressed schoolgirl. On top of that, he was tiring badly. In the last week he had eaten only what he could catch as a dog (mostly rats and squirrels) or what he could salvage from rubbish bins (he preferred the rats and squirrels, actually) and it was taking a toll on his already emaciated body.

Lady Luck was still smiling at him though (or laughing, but he was not going to call her on it) and he at last saw his way to freedom in the form of a large drainage ditch. He jumped the railing and sprinted into the dark culverts, ignoring the icy bite of the ankle deep water. Around twenty minutes later he was finally outside the city.

The ditch emptied into a canal, and an overpass a few meters from where he emerged promised a bit of shelter. Once he was underneath, he unceremoniously dumped the girl onto the ground and collapsed into a heap, clutching at his burning chest. He laid there for a long time, and when he looked up the girl was staring at him.

"What are you still doing here?" he asked.

"Last time you let me go you were lying," she accused. "How do I know this isn't some sort of trick?"

"Last time was a special case. And look, really, I apologize about all of this. Now scram."

"Just like that?" She still wore an expression of extreme suspicion.

"Just like that."

"I'm going to go straight to the police."

"Whatever floats yer boat missy."

She hesitated, still torn between relief and disbelief. "What's that stick?" she asked.

"Stick?" Sirius responded, confused by the sudden change of pace.

"Yes, that stick you're holding. You've been pointing it at me all day and those funny looking men seemed scared of it. It's some kind of weapon isn't it? Like a taser. You're going to use it on me as soon as I turn my back on you, I just know it."

"I don't even know what a tay-zur is," Sirius complained. "And I'm not going to use this on you. It's a wand. You know, for casting magic. But it's completely useless to me. I can't even use it."

She looked at him as though he had grown an additional head. "You're completely batty! Magic? Aren't you a little old for fairy tales?"

"I'm not batty!" Sirius retorted, but withered a bit under her incredulous glare. "Well, ok, I am a bit batty. Maybe a little doggy too, haha! But seriously, I'm a wizard and this is my ... well, it's not mine, but it is a wand."

If skepticism could be given human form and placed in front of him it could not have been more skeptical than the look the girl was giving him. In fact, her entire bearing said, quite clearly, "You're an idiot." Her eyes were especially bad. They said, "You're a bleeding idiot. You're stupider than a sack of hammers. You fell out of the stupid tree and hit every..."

"Arrgh! That's it!" Sirius shouted. "I'll prove it to you!"

"I thought you couldn't use it," she retorted smugly.

"Oh I'll make it work," he growled.

She just lifted an eyebrow in response, which infuriated Sirius all the more. He bent and picked up a rock and made a show of setting it down in front of her. He sucked a deep breath through his nose and gave his wand a swish and a flick and said-

_-never forget Wizard Baruffio, who said 's' instead of 'f' and found himself on the floor with a buffalo on his chest._

_James said something extremely off color and both of them ended up in detention because they could not stop laughing._

_As James was passing Harry to him he said "He'll be hung like Flitwick's buffalo," and Sirius spit his punch all over Lily's clean rug and she ran all three of them out of the house. Harry pooed his nappy and James was begging at the window to be let back in, but Lily threw a fresh cloth at him and hit him in the face. They were laughing so hard that James tied the new one on without wiping the boy's bottom and had to beg at the window for another._

_James was..._

The girl was looking at him strangely.

"Sorry," Sirius said. "Been a while, you know? Had to remember the spell." He wiped at his eyes discreetly. He wasn't crying was he? He was relieved to find them dry.

Clenching his teeth he swished his wand again and cried "Wingardium Leviosa!"

Nothing happened. The rock sat exactly where he put it. Rocks couldn't be smug could they?

"Wingardium Leviosa!" he shouted again, a little more determined this time. Again, nothing.

The girl shifted her weight and placed her hands on her hips somewhat imperiously. Sirius did not dare look at her face. He blew out a frustrated breath. Setting his jaw stubbornly he spread his feet, raised the wand above his head, gave it a mighty _SWISH!_, a mighty _FLICK!_, and bellowed "Confound it, WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!"

Black smoke billowed from the wand tip. The shaft grew hot in his hand. Really hot. Really, extremely hot. He tried to throw it down but found his hand would not open.

"Aiiiie, it's hot, it's hot! Auugh, I'm burning!" he shrieked, shaking his hand around wildly.

He was trying to pry the fingers of his right hand open when he heard the girl say, "There's quite a bit of water right beside you." He dashed to the bank of the canal and plunged his hand into the water and immediately steam erupted into his face. The water cooled the wand and unlocked his fingers. He angrily threw the wand into the mud and blew on his hand miserably.

"If you're going to carry a weapon at least know how to use it," the girl sighed behind him.

"I do know how to use it," Sirius snapped sullenly. "It's not my fault this wand is rubbish. And that should prove it, that I'm a wizard, and that's a wand, and ... blast it, why are you still here? Clear out darling. If I wanted you to stay I'd have conked you over the head or something."

She backed away a few steps.

"And take this stupid thing with you. It's caused me more grief than good," he groused, and tossed the wand at her. She caught it reflexively.

The moment the wand touched her hand a shower of sparks blazed from the tip. The girl yelped in surprise and dropped it. Sirius felt his jaw drop. "Y-y-y-you're a witch!" he sputtered.

"I am not a witch!" she shot back, sounding aggrieved.

"No no no! I mean, I'm a wizard, and you're a witch! That is, you can use magic!" he explained excitedly. She had to be younger than 11 years old. What were the odds that he would pick up an unidentified witch in a city full of Muggles?

She stared at the wand is disbelief. "I-it's a trick," she said shakily. "That's just some kind of fancy taser."

"Does it look fancy to you?"

That stumped her. "Uh, well..."

"Pick it up. Go on, don't be shy."

She shot a pointed look at his wand hand, which was sporting a wand-shaped streak that was the stark white and red that characterized minor burns. He shook it somewhat self-consciously. "Haha, don't worry about this. I don't think it will burn you. The only time I could get it to make sparks like that was when I didn't want to."

Cautiously she squatted next to the wand and poked it nervously with one finger. When nothing happened she snatched it up quickly and held it out as though she expected it to explode.

"Think about magic and give it a good shake," Sirius told her.

"About magic?" she asked uncertainly. She bit her lip fretfully and gave the wand a little wave. Another shower of sparks jumped from the tip and she yelped again, but did not drop the wand.

"See there?" Sirius said cheerily. "Nothing to worry about." He clapped his hands together briskly. "Now how about learning a real spell?"

The wide eyed amazement in her face answered his question. "I bet you can do that one I was trying. Here, we'll even use the same rock."

"What is that spell supposed to do?" she asked breathlessly.

"It makes things float," Sirius answered. "Now, you're going to give the wand a little swish and a flick and say 'Wingardium Leviosa' while thinking about making this rock float. Think you can?"

He demonstrated the motions with his hand and then pointed to the rock. Her first couple of tries were shaky and produced absolutely squat, but when the rock jumped perceptibly she gave a very girly shriek of glee.

"It really is magic, isn't it?" she gushed. "Oh, this is so amazing! Why aren't there any books about this!"

Sirius laughed at that. "There are libraries so big you can't see either end with nothing _but_ books about this!"

When she heard that her eyes grew as large and luminous as little moons. "I want to go," she said dreamily, already gazing off into the distance as though she could see it.

"Well, when you turn eleven you'll get your Hogwarts letter and then-"

"Eleven!" she interrupted, suddenly coming back from whatever mental orbit she had been in. "That's next year! I can't wait until next year!"

"Patience is a virtue," Sirius intoned sagely. "Every kid has to wait until they're eleven."

"Who are the people you are running from?" she asked.

"That's ... wait, what?" She had switched gears on him again. Where was she going this time?

"You're running from those funny looking men. Why?"

"Well ... those are Aurors. They're like Mugg- er, well, they're like police. And as for why I'm running?" Sirius hesitated with his answer. What was she asking, and why was he answering? _What_ was he answering? "I was ... accused ... of a crime," he said slowly.

"Were you convicted?"

"I was sent to prison," he answered.

She thought about this for a few moments. Sirius was pretty sure if he could see into her head there would actually be gears grinding out answers in an information factory. There was something about the way this girl spoke, how she asked questions, how she was able to perform magic (however weak it might have been) within minutes of learning of its existence that suggested to Sirius that he might be dealing with a child prodigy of some kind.

Coming out of deep thought she gave him a smirk and said, "That's not what I asked."

Sirius sighed. Definitely a prodigy. She had cut through his misdirection to the heart of the matter. "There was no trial," he said. Saying it out loud hurt more than he thought it would.

"No trial!" she exclaimed incredulously. "You can't send a person to prison without a trial!"

Sirius laughed bitterly. "Tell that to the people who put me there. Speaking of whom, I've wasted too much time here already. Go home, read a book, practice your levitation spell, and look forward to your Hogwarts letter. Oh, and drink a cup o' hot cocoa for me."

"What were you accused of?"

"Wha- I'm not kidding here, scram kid!"

"Don't want to."

"You've gotta be shi ... Ugh, I mean, I can't believe this. You do realize I'm a convict right? Convicts aren't nice people. I could kill you and dump the body. Leave. Now."

"I'm not worried about that. You're innocent."

"I- What ... did you say?"

"You're innocent," she repeated calmly, as though she had no idea what those words meant to him.

"You can't just arbitrarily decide that!" Sirius shouted at her. "How do you know?"

"I don't know. I just do."

How she managed to sound snooty while making such a nonsensical declaration of ignorance Sirius could not figure out, but she did. He wanted to argue her down, send her packing like he knew he should but ... nine years in Azkaban and finally, finally, someone who would speak the words "You're innocent," to him. He sat down on the bank of the canal, feeling as though he had lost a battle he did not know he was fighting. Was this girl also a Seer, to have such certainty?

The girl had that thoughtful look again. "No man would be thrown into prison without a trial unless the people putting him there thought he would be found innocent," she said. "Additionally, you don't act anything like a man guilty of a crime. Uh, not that I've known many criminals. Well ... I haven't known any at all, but that's beside the point ... isn't it? Anyway, I believe you're innocent."

Sirius put his head in his hands. Not a Seer, then. Just a precocious brat with a disturbing knack for logic. The feeling that he should get rid of her as quickly as possible, for her own sake, returned, but instead he found himself doing something he did not expect.

"I've never spoken these words aloud before," he said tiredly. "I was accused..." he broke off, unable to continue. It was still so hard.

"I've changed my mind," the girl said quietly. "Since you're innocent, it doesn't matter what you were accused of. You don't need to say it."

The out she provided for him was tempting, but suddenly it seemed as though speaking the source of his misery was important. "I was accused of betraying my best friend and his wife to their deaths, and murdering a bunch of people."

As the words left his lips he felt something leave with them, something dark and vicious that had been chewing at his insides for nine long years.

"Is that why you're so intent on escaping that you'll commit real crimes to get away?" the girl asked.

"No. I was content to rot there. I mean, what did I have left, yeah? But ... damn that Dumbledore for an incompetent ass!"

The girl frowned at his language and gave him an expectant look.

"Pardon m' French," Sirius mumbled, which seemed to mollify her. "Anyway, I found out that my godson, Harry, disappeared. Harry is James and Lily's son ... James and Lily were my friends who were ... killed. There're a lot of people who would pay in blood to see Harry dead. I thought he was supposed to be safe, with Dumbledore watching him and all, but ... how the bloody hell do you just lose the Boy Who Lived! The Boy Who Lived!"

"I don't get that last part, but you want to find him and help him, right?"

"That's right. I don't trust anyone else to do it right, so it's up to me." Sirius looked her over for a moment. "Come to think of it, he's your age."

"Hmm, well then, it's decided. I'm going to help," the girl stated authoritatively.

Sirius boggled at her. "A-absolutely out of the question! I'm not taking you with me!"

The girl smiled slyly at him. Sirius saw the gears turning again. _Oh, not good._

"Who said anything about you _taking_ me? You're going to convince my parents to let me go with you."

Sirius' frustrated cry warbled mournfully down the canal.

In the distance, a dog barked.

**. . .** **. . .**

_Oh not good. Oh not good. Oh not good._

Sirius clamped his teeth tight to keep his jaw from chattering and stared resolutely into Dr. Granger's eyes.

'_I haven't told you? It's Hermione Granger. Ah, Hermione Jean Granger. Having the middle name makes it sound important. No, no, the 'i' goes before the 'o.' Spell it how it's pronounced!'_

Dr. Granger lowered his eyes and looked back at the letter in his hands, reading it carefully. The phony Hogwarts acceptance letter that Sirius had penned himself just an hour earlier. He desperately wanted to use the momentary break in eye contact to slap at the cold sweat that was trickling down the back of his neck, but Hermione's mother was standing next to her husband and she was not taking her eyes off him.

_I swear I'm not a pervert! Oh, I want to be a dog. I want to be a happy dog and romp in the sunshine and eat old hamburgers out of garbage bins and-_

"Professor ... White, was it?" Dr. Granger inquired slowly. _Was that suspicion in his voice?_

"YES!" Sirius barked hysterically. All three Grangers jumped. He rushed on, trying to fill the gap before an awkward silence rushed in. "Orion White, Professor of Arithmancy." He had wanted to say 'Defense Against the Dark Arts,' but Hermione had vetoed it saying, 'Don't be silly. We need something _respectable_ sounding. Now what other classes are taught there?'

"Arithmancy?" Dr. Granger asked, obviously seeking clarification.

"It's the study of the relationship between magic and numbers," Sirius answered easily. _Please don't ask anymore! I never took Arithmancy! I failed any test remotely related to it! I failed most tests period!_

"I see..." Dr. Granger said speculatively. He eyed Sirius up and down, again. Sirius tried not to fidget in his cheap suit. Hermione had bought it for him for a few pounds at a charity outlet. It was a little worn, but not terribly shabby. A shower and shave at a service station along the highway had completed the transformation from scruffy escaped convict to pale, thin, Arithmancy professor. Hermione had pulled most of the kinks out of his wild, untamed hair and braided it. It was a little lopsided, but when he looked in the mirror he scarcely recognized himself. And that was good, because this little shenanigan depended on it.

Dr. Granger was speaking again. "It says here that Hermione has been selected for an Early Entrance program available to children of non-magical parents, but the starting date is listed as August 1st. Today is the 9th. Is there a reason for the delay?"

This was part of the plan, a red herring meant to both reveal that magic was not perfect, and to serve as a distraction from any true plot holes.

"Even magical systems aren't immune to failure," Sirius answered. "We have to actively search for magical children born among the Muggle population. Miss Granger slipped through the net until the last moment. Normally she would have to enroll at the start of term, but she took her Key Stage 2 mock SAT recently, correct?" Her parents nodded, both of them sporting small smiles. "When I saw the results I just had to bend the procedure a bit."

He was gambling on the last part. As he and Hermione discussed the holes in their plan she had been perfectly willing to tell him all about the practice exam she had taken. There was only one problem. She spoke endlessly about her failures, her perceived failures, about the questions she may not have answered "completely correct," but she had not said one word about the questions she got right. She seemed uncomfortable with the topic. Nor would she talk about her overall performance. Sirius knew the girl was brilliant, but it seemed that she only saw her shortcomings. Regardless, he felt like he was taking no big risk betting on her test results. If the girl was half as intelligent as he thought she was, they had to be astounding.

He was not disappointed. Hermione's mother immediately turned to her and said, "See honey, I told you you did fine!"

Hermione did something very surprising. She glared at the floor with a petulant look. "That Emerson boy beat me," she mumbled, obviously humiliated. "I botched my fractions and didn't have time to triple check the maths portion. I messed it up!"

'_At last she acts like a child," _Sirius thought. _'Though now that I've seen it I wish I hadn't.'_ She was so disappointed in herself.

Her parents both smiled brightly at him, but Sirius didn't miss the quicksilver flash of matching grimaces the smiles hid. There was a moment of silence both awkward and familiar. Neither tried to correct her; this was obviously an old song and dance to them. Besides, after teaching a child all their lives to always strive to be right, how do you tell them it is okay to be wrong?

Despite their unmistakable unhappiness in their inability to console their exceptional daughter Sirius recognized a gleam in their eyes he was well acquainted with. How many times had he seen that look directed at his brother? Hermione's parents were stunningly proud of her. Proud in the way that Sirius' own parents had never been proud of him. He felt his stomach tighten threateningly. Could he really do this? Take a child from her parents who loved her, simply because he wanted _someone to talk to?_

Of course, Hermione had convinced him that she could help him in his quest. She had rambled on about countless different plans, tricks, and strategies that she could pull off and he could not the whole time she was picking out his new suit in the run down little charity store. She hadn't let his shower interrupt her either. She perched on a nasty old bench outside his stall and chattered away, apparently unconcerned that she was on the men's side of the showers and completely deaf to his demands that she wait somewhere, _anywhere,_ else. She continued with hardly a pause for breath as she braided his hair. She seemed to believe that if she missed a single moment to bend his ear that he would change his mind. Truthfully, she was probably right. The whole affair was wrong on so many levels, but nine years in Azkaban made it difficult to remember what was considered "right" and "wrong."

"Normally," Sirius thrust into the melancholy silence, "this is where the professor would demonstrate magic in order to convince the parents of the reality of this offer. This time, however, I think I will ask your daughter to be the demonstrator." Hermione looked up to meet his eyes. This was part of the plan, given that he could not use the wand, but seeing her self-reproach Sirius was determined to make it more. He passed her the wand.

"Now Ms. Granger," Sirius said to her in what he imagined to be a teacher's tone of voice. "I'm going to teach you a simple spell taught to all first year students." He proceeded to go through the motions of teaching her the Wingardium Leviosa spell. When he was done he placed a cup coaster which had been lying on the coffee table in front of her.

"I'd like you to levitate this coaster," he said. "This spell requires a certain amount of control, which I cannot teach you. You must feel that out on your own. Too much force could send your target through the ceiling. Too little and it may tip, spin, or otherwise do something you don't want it to. Try it."

Hermione hesitantly raised the wand and pointed it at the coaster. Her hands were shaking and she refused to meet Sirius' eyes. He bit back a word of encouragement and now her eyes did meet his. They were uncertain, questioning. He gazed back with no change in expression. His quiet vote of confidence seemed to steady her. She swished the wand, flicked it, and clearly spoke "Wingardium Leviosa."

The coaster shuddered a bit and rose to hover about six inches in the air. Twin gasps from her parents startled her and she dropped it, but the magic had been worked. Hermione turned quickly to her parents, seeking approval.

"That was ... was," her father seemed at a loss for words. Her mother was slightly more articulate. "That was amazing sweetheart." Hermione beamed.

"She's not done yet," Sirius interjected. Three pairs of eyes turned to him – two with expectation, one with trepidation. Sirius grinned at Hermione's relapse into hesitancy. That lack of confidence irritated him. He was going to squash it.

"There is a difference between levitating a small object and a large object," he informed Hermione. "Not a terribly large one, but there's a reason students don't go around levitating castles. They're quite heavy, and the amount of control necessary increases with size and weight."

He placed his heels together, grasped his left hand with his right in front of his hips, and tilted his head upward. "Now Ms. Granger, levitate me."

Hermione's mother broke in. "Are you sure that's quite – "

Sirius held up a hand to still her concerns and resumed his former posture.

"The Early Entrance program is for **talented** students," he said, emphasizing the word. "I have absolute faith in your daughter's abilities." And for the first time since he walked through the Granger's front door, he was not lying – because he did.

She did it quickly, as though she did not want to lose her nerve. Sirius heard her incant the spell and felt himself rise. The hair on top of his head tickled as it brushed the ceiling, but he did not bump his head. He immediately began to descend as Hermione tried to put him down, but he stopped her with a quick command. He instantly quit sinking.

"Before you set me down, move me a few meters in a direction of your choice," he commanded her. "Then set me down."

She did not respond. The tip of her tongue was visible where she had it clenched between her prominent front teeth in concentration. Sirius floated gently towards the couch and then to the floor. His feet touched without a whisper. Immediately Hermione thrust the wand at him, lest he come up with some other nerve wracking test for her.

"Well done Ms. Granger," he said quietly as he took the wand from her hand. "Full marks."

She favored him with such a smile that the whole room seemed to light up. She was a gangly little creature, as all children tend to be. His godson Harry was her age. Sirius only remembered a gurgling tot, but that little baby's smile had the same effect on any room he had cared to reveal it in. He wondered if Harry looked anything like Hermione, with her big teeth, unruly hair, and eager and uncertain expressions. Was he alive? Was he well?

Sirius stepped back as Hermione's parents crowded her, showering her with praise. The little girl soaked it up but Sirius saw no conceit in her. Each commendation seemed a surprise to her.

Thirty minutes later, after a few more half-truths and outright lies, Hermione was skipping ahead of him as her waving parents, standing on the sidewalk outside their house, vanished around a corner.

"It's not too late to go back," he said to her. "You could make up any story you like and they would believe it. You're good at it. I could tell you how to contact real Hogwarts teachers. You could say a real goodbye to your parents and all your friends at school."

Hermione stopped skipping. "I don't have any friends," she said sadly. "I don't want to go back to my old school. I'm a witch, and I want to start being one right now!" She punctuated her statement with a defiant stomp of her foot.

_No friends huh?_ "But if you contacted a real teacher – "

"You need my help don't you? Your godson is in danger, right?" Hermione pressed him.

"Yeah," Sirius admitted.

"So where are we going first?"

Sirius pondered this. The Department of Secrets was full of prophecies. Was there one there about him? Was Fate at the rudder of his life even now, directing its strange and unpredictable course?

"Hogwarts," he answered. "I have a bone to pick with the Headmaster."

He thought about this statement. "A bone to pick, haha! Shall I bury it once I've picked it? Ha ha ha!"

Hermione looked at him like he was crazy.

**. . . . . .**

A/N

Oh lawds, an update? It occurred to me as I wrote this why Rowling never bothered to reveal how Muggle parents are convinced to let their children attend a magic school which, as far as we know, they are never allowed to even see (shortly after being convinced that magic is, in fact, real after all). There are too many bloody hurdles to jump. It's easier to just suspend our disbelief.

Additionally, does anyone appreciate how hard it is to write about a 30-year-old convict taking a 10-year-old girl on an adventure without detouring into Have-a-seat-over-there territory? It's lampshaded a bit for fun in Hermione's initial accusations, but analyzing each and every word, right down to the articles and prepositions, to avoid trips into Creepville is a rather exhausting exercise. That's no excuse for how long it took to write this, but I'm going to use it anyway.

That aside, Sirius has bitten off far more than he can chew. Have fun watching him squirm.


End file.
